| Title | : | A Field Guide to Otherkin |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 190571307X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781905713073 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 316 |
| Publication | : | First published March 1, 2007 |
A Field Guide to Otherkin Reviews
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Lupa's book, "A Field Guide to Otherkin" is an *amazing* book for anyone who has ever felt "not quite right" in their human skin. Based on the responses from a questionnaire the author created, the book revolves around descriptions of the different types of Otherkin from elf-kin, dragon-kin, therians (animal-kin) and beyond. It utilizes quotes directly from the approx. 130 questionnaires that were answered and even supplies the actual questionnaire for the reader to fill out, if they so choose. She also supplies a huge source of (mostly online) source material for people interested in learning more. I learned an incredible amount from this book and have referred back to it numerous times. My first copy is so beat-up from use, I'm considering purchasing a new one!
2021: rereading my original copy yet again and it's been highlighted, dog-eared, written in the margins, stained, and otherwise brutalized. Unfortunately, this title has been out of print for a number of years even though it is still in high demand. -
This is the only book on Otherkin that I know of and it's actually a pretty good one. Lupa simply took a survey and analyzed the data from people who identify as Otherkin. It really helped me come to terms and accept my true self as a Daemonkin. There should be more books like this.
It's fairly comprehensive, covering not just Otherkin and Therians, but also the fluff bunny equivalent of the community, namely Wishkin, but also the largely hypothetical "Otakukin". However, she doesn't talk down to them with scorn and disdain and even goes on to say that yes, there are some people who might be playing make believe, but playing make believe isn't a bad thing and even notes how animals use play as a way to hone their skill sets, which, all information on Otherkin aside is a value life lesson that anyone can benefit from.
A very great read and recommended for anyone interested in the subject. -
I like her thorough and open-minded approach but ultimately she doesn’t ask the tough and most important question as to our identifying as “Otherkin” in some metaphysical sense: “can we see this as the most true understanding of reality or is it to be relegated only to our imaginations, emotions, and identification (identity politics)?”
Like the next guy on the street, I’m in the fluffy darkness like most moderns, I would giggle if a person came up to me and said we humans are perhaps descended from Elves, light beings what have you, in some sense; that we still are such inside and are returning to such again one day more fully.
But it is essentially what a lot of “ancient alien theorists” believe today, which is so popular. And as one who was read over 2,000 books from all ancient cultures it is more or less what most believed in most parts of the world and in most centuries in a broader sense (that is, near all primordial, shamanic and pagan cultures believed we are the ancestors of divine gods, we are that which has devolved unto who we now are, gods who became terrestrial and mortal over time then became half us, demi-gods, then fully, present man-form. Proclus, last teacher of the school of Plato and Pythagoras, said the whole value of myth lies in their beings personifying each of the being epochs before man and all the details of what they went through in those epochs and the order the epochs occured in).
Also science now knows present human form is but one single strain that came out from all kinds of very strange “Otherkin” we sapiens once coexisted alongside as recently as 28K years ago. Somewhere between 7 and 12 very odd looking kin went through a bottleneck period and we are what’s left of them. We have found hobbits, halflings, existed alongside us with the discovery of Florienses and now a second one discovered. We have discovered a very tall, bone-dense almost mega-human existed (as the Aesir or Ashers of old are described in the Bible and Norse Myth) via Cro-Magnon and Denisovan, especially their predecessor Vieira has demonstrably shown repressed by Hrdlika. We have discovered a short, swarthy, cave-dwelling sapien resembling the ancient description of “dwarves” almost to the T. We have discovered neanderthal had almost no real spiritual or cultural practice but required twice the daily protein intake of present humans to survive and have found human bones with bite marks, cannibalism evidences, in their caves with them; so why not call them Orcs? About the only thing we haven’t discovered yet from world Myths are elves. But if they are more metaphysically etherial by very definition according to these culture’s own lore then you can’t expect them to “produce the body” as such dense materialization would disprove how they are, by very metaphysical nature, described in their old accounts. So to even ask such is just a misunderstanding of their texts.
All one can choose to do then is see it as reasonable or not that there were once more etherial light beings among man who had a role in who we are now and that this is tied in to our present inner, essential identity. If one chooses not to hold that as reasonable until shown otherwise is this not just a desire for real, experiential truth, which is not a bad desire? So let us not overly condemn the modern skeptic.
But they do need to realize one thing and we should not ever let them off the hook on this: about all cultures in all centuries up till the 1600’s AD claimed ancient teachings of their own culture (to be respected and not denigrated) taught to the contrary of the modern skeptics stance on this question. And a good many humans even today find the opposite stance from theirs the more reasonable one in light of such pan-global detailed testimonies of such of an odd sort from all parts of the globe.
What do I mean?
Just off the top of my head, let’s look at a few of the witnesses. Augustine said he did not understand why Jerome removed the Book of Enoch from the Canon one day without announcing why in his time. In that - once essential writing to early Christianity and quoted more times than any old testament writing in both the Jewish Essene texts found and in the Christian New Testament - it clearly states after the Nephidim and before humans there were the Eliuj (see Charlesworth, Ethiopian Book of Enoch). Think about that for a moment. It was once canonical Christianity that we were descended from the Elves. In the earliest scroll we have of Isaiah, the Essene copy, it says all nations were named not after the sons of Noah, as later copies changed it to, but after the “Bne Elim” which means sons of gods and is the Old Testament nomenclature for them. It is also the name for all the beings after the gods and before man in Plato’s The Banquet. In Xenophon’s Anabasis we find the Greeks marching to their death shouting their victory cry of “Ennea Enyalion” which means “for the sons of the gods from whom we descend,” they whom they identified as descending from. When Jesus was charged for calling himself divine he quoted David who in turn was quoting a more ancient source on a prophecy given to the claimed beings before man: “I have said you are gods (El’s) sons of the Most High (El Enyalion), but you will all fall like dogs.” The Mandean Nazarites own books (see Drower) teach of the light brothers of man who just before man came on to earth. In their writings they taught we have such a fravashi light body that can still commune with them. The Mandan Indians in America also taught this concerning our inner makeup. Keating, on his history of the Irish, did not himself believe it but said their tradition was they claimed descent from beings called Alphe’s who were divine and that the Alpines once extended more up into the North and were then named after them too. Of course all Norse lore speaks of the Elves from Elvenhome continent isle in the far Northwest and called them Alphae as well. In all the Greek Lorists, Hesiod, Ovid, Strabo, etc., they make mention of these divine Elpaios of “Alphaeus River” who descended from the Numakos and Syths and slowly became mortal. Their isle is called Elios and in archaic greek language a second “L” was pronounced like a “V” when added. So what does that tell us about the “Ellene’s” and whom they claimed identification to and descent by blood from? Especially is this shown in that the Romans called them merely “they of the blood” (“Grai-coi” - see Dionysius of Halicarnassus). Even today most Icelanders believe in the Huldofolk or hiddenfolk light being elves whom man followed after. And there is a place in central Norway called Elfdale one can find online which was anciently called such and where their language is now fading they are attempting to preserve that their ancestors claimed came from the Elves. It is a very odd language and no it was not invented by Tolkien. The South Americans teach of a star light being type that preceded man and still dwell metaphysically in imprint in the dense forests and their name for them are the Aleush (compare to Book of Enoch). Graham Hancock speaks of encountering such and says the Shaman do all the time still there. Hippolytus tries to refute the Greeks and the Gnostics in saying they both claim descent from beings called the Citians who were sidereal Syths. Pausanias said the Megarians claimed they were the result of a Syth and mortal woman mating. The Hindu’s teach of the Siddu star beings of Swyambhuva Manu who alighted upon Siddhapura and began a little before man-form as is also taught by Mohammud in the Quran. The ancient Irish and British texts are absolutely filled with details on the beings before man form called the Siddhé and they didn’t know of Hindu texts back then. The Chinese teach man descended from the Suiren fire beings who came after the god ancestors and just before man form’s present house and speak of them intermingling with the 5 houses of man before our own. Ancient Iranian texts claim the etymology for the meaning of their own languages’ name “Farsi” is that they and it descend from the Pereldhur Faérie’s (Pereldhur means half elf in their language). Spencer and Fraser (the former being in the 1600’s) claim the same for the Friseans, that they say the name of their people’s denotes they descended from the Fay or Fairie Folk. I have found ancient testimonies (and ancient maps confirming it) that both the Elbe running through Germany and the Olb running through all Siberia and Russia were both of old called the Elvé River and that a region in between the two was considered where they still in faded manner existed. All of this is but one long winded paragraph scratching the surface of what would take up several thousands of pages (and does in my notes over the past 20 years on many matters). But it should suffice for now to show all people’s ancient cultures taught such doctrine which the most wise of the movements of our past three centuries also gave out in great detail concerning (Lady Hahn, Evola, Tolkien in similitude and George MacDonald). And so this matter should be respected if it is choosen to be believed in as reality and the most reasonable.
This is all she missed, but it was a big thing to miss.
“You know what I am he said...the speaker was an angel.” - David Bowie, Look Back In Anger -
It is sad that this landmark book has gone out of print. This book was the first of its kind, but hopefully will not be the last book to explore the psychology and spirituality of therianthropy and otherkin.
Lupa has said on her blogs that she could have been more in depth if she had done this after she had gotten her degree. I do agree, but also believe that she did extremely thorough a job considering that she was undergoing psychiatric training at the time and in it being a rough field guide. -
I was thrilled to finally read something on Otherkin. I've wanted to read on the topic for some time, but with the lack of printed materials out there I wasn't sure where to begin.
Lupa writes in a style that's clear and easy to read without making you look up words every page like some non-fiction authors do.
In reading the book I was happy and shocked to read some of the things I did. Not only thing that related to myself but things that related to others (not others as in Otherkin). Lupa takes time to explain her writing and her meanings and her use of APA style in this book was wonderful because you could easily take a few moments to look something up at the bottom of the page or mark something for later reference.
I admire Lupa not only as a reader of her work or another writer, but I admire her as a person in general. Her writing in this book comes across as she does even on social media. Friendly, knowledgeable, and comfortable as who she is. This book is one of the small number I'll be reading again and again and I can't wait to read more of Lupa's works. -
I wouldn't call this an essential modern resource or the ideal place for newcomers. A lot has changed in community terminology since this was published, largely for the better: there's clearer boundaries around otherkin/therian identities and a better understanding of how they fit--and blend!--into other alterhuman identities, making the internet the better modern entry point. Neither is it essential reading for average community members, because the community history is preserved and discussed online. Don't worry too much about missing out on this now that it's grown difficult to access.
But as a snapshot of contemporary otherkin et al. communities, this is fascinating! And flawed. The balance leans towards magical and mythological, and the relative absence of community history feels like an oversight; a lot of space is given to identities like modern vampirism and plurality which would now fall under the alterhuman umbrella rather than being specifically otherkin. Some of this is an objective flaw, some is attributable to author bias, but as much of it is a snapshot of the community of the era--and, like the interesting inclusion of physical/genetic and archetypal origins, and the surprisingly slight emphasis on shifting, I'd be hard-pressed to pinpoint which is which.
As the first published book on otherkin, this is an important and formative work; while outdated, I wish it were more accessible in order to enable the ongoing, evolving conversation for which is advocates. And for all I say it's not essential reading outside that context, I'm glad to've finally read it--it's a fully-realized, consistently readable snapshot of its place in community history. -
I found this book really interesting, well written and informative, but still easy to read and get into.
Her research was in-depth, and the information was presented accurately, interestingly, and without bias.
Really enjoyed it, and wondering if there are any Otherkin in my area now. :) -
Ever wonder if you were "not quite human"? This book lets you know you're not alone, yet never gets TOO serious about the idea.
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Interesting compilation of material, especially about walk-ins and soulbonds, which I know little about. I liked the great detail and agree with a lot of the conclusions of the author.
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My biggest qualms with this book come from the unusually frequent typos for a professionally published book, which does much to remove some credibility from the author. That type of thing takes a reader out of the book. But other than that, this is an interesting introduction to a spiritual phenomenon that while strange to those who don't believe is ultimately perfectly harmless. The book is written in a conversational style which allows the information to come across easier than, say, a paper. All of the information is cited in a lengthy, semi-annotated bibliography in the back as well. While I have come to the conclusion that I am not Otherkin, I do not regret reading the book, and do recommend it to anyone seeking some alternate perspective on spirituality.
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I bought this book soon after its release and have been re-reading it at least 2-3 times after. At the time of its release it quickly became famous between the otherkin communities, and was then up to date. However, it has now become a bit outdated, and it is also worth mentioning that the author no longer identify as a therianthrope.
The book is interesting to read, it contains illustrations and several interviews, from people of various walks of life. Worth a read, if you can find a copy.
I give it three out of five stars, due to the book being outdated and the author no longer considering herself a therianthrope. -
Essential reading when it comes to Otherkin. See also O. Scribner’s marginalia on the book.
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A must read.
