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there is a thread about whether or not otherkin are dangerous.
well this lead me to ask some questions of my own.
how do you define an otherkin? by their action? by the way they look? i dont realy think anyones discused this.
maby its from the way they think,maby even by how they feel, how they react to situations, or simple what they do, a habit they have. or its an unatural habit or a different perseption perhaps? is there a test someone has to pass or fail in order to be considered otherkin? maby its a mental disorder? how would someone go about figureing out if they are otherkin or not? ive felt a strong conection to snakes and sometimes dogs in my life. does this group me together with an otherkin?

To further answer some of your questions, it is always impossible to spot an otherkin out in a crowd because let's face it, on the outside we all are human. No one has horns or tails or fur...well, maybe those rednecks do on their backs >_<

Anyway, otherkin usually don't reveal themselves outside of the interwebs unless its with someone they trust to hell(s) and back. Let's face it, how many people are going to believe you or be cool with you after you tell them that your soul/spirit isn't human?

As for how they think or act, well there's no real generalizations we can make here since otherkin are influenced by their race and by their human personalities. They come in a range of behaviors and cultures so there really aren't many universals that I've seen.

so this shift you describe, is it between one spirit and another that are one in the same, or is it something describable on th elines or borderline multiple personality dissorder? also, i sometimes have past life regresions. ive also had many dreams about events that happened later in my life. does this make me otherkin as you described? or is it perhaps possible that because of my degree of insanity (borderline multiple personality disorder as deduced my doctors) mixed with my spirit feeling like an animals?
(further explained) you know how you feel auras? i hate mine. it feels closer to a dogs rather then anyone ive met as of yet.(dog described isnt an acctual dog it just feels doglike.

first things first...

1). crying im deeply hurt that you changed my font color to purple... it just broke me heart... xp

2). i get what your saying, but how does anyone know that that is what makes you qualified to be an otherkin? to my awareness there havent been many, if any, scientific studies on the subject and only people that 'are' otherkin know the exact feeling excludeing the way its described because its described so shady. i mean, im not one useualy to be sceptical but it just sounds like people either want to soudn cool to their friends, or they have a mental perspective something akin to the werewolf disease (maby not exact name of it) that causes the person to go mad and belive that they are a dog.

and besides that if someone were to decide they are otherkin because they feel their aura (or soul or whatever it is you feel thats diffrent when your otherkin) is diffrent, how would they go about justifying that? if its indeed the soul that has the diffrence in feeling then they wouldnt be able to tell if it feels like a dog or like a humans because to my awareness its impossible to feel someones soul (wouldnt that be grand, a bunch of young people punching eachothers souls xd )...

so haveing thought that i concluded that it must be the aura that feels diffrent, but in my experiance, you can find the distinctions between human and animal souls, and individual humans fairly easy. so if someone felt their aura were diffrent from soneone elses, but are not experianced enough to make hte distinction between everyone yet, they oculd eaasily think their aura feels more animal like then human, and thus confuse it. but thats just one senario...

again, i hate beig sceptical but i just have trouble beleiveing that the only distintion between 'normal' people and 'otherkin' is the way they [the subject] feels. dont get me wrong, a little insanity here and there is good for everyone biggrin . perhaps someone shoudl start makeing some kind of presentable evidence that prooves otherkin to be real or ficticious.

(forgive me for any spelling errors and if i might have veered a little off topic.)

ok....
1. i was just messing around about teh changeing color thing. i might make my font violet but if nobody can read it then the cause is lostwith the text. XD.

2. i have absoltely no idea what you were talking about wit the steak. it got a little confuseing then completely lost. sweatdrop

3. the hting i was trying to explain about the diffrence between feeling auas and souls is that:

if you could feel other peoples souls, it would be easier to know who is otherkin and who is just blabering.

i know its possible to feel auras because im able to, and plenty of other people have done it before me so its nothign special.

the idea of being able to know that you are a animal soul in a human body would be that you can feel your soul, and that its animal instead of human.

now, since you can feel auras, and (to my knowledge someone please correct me if im wrong) you cant feel souls there is no possible way for someone to know if someone else is otherkin, so it would be impossible to claim you are otherkin.
(it would only be imposible because you cant prove to anyone that you definitly are).
if someone can develope a way to proove otherkins exist without a doubt, it would be a phanominal development in psionics or magick (whatever it falls under) and would thus final proove whether someone has a human or animal soul, if its indeed possible to have an animal soul.

but then again it could be people that can feel thei aura and think its their soul. which would explain everything, and be plausible becuase you can thus proove it by haveing someone else 'sence' your aura and compare it to animals.
then again, it would be hard to even proove it then becuase while most people have the human element in their aura, they dont necessarily all feel the same..... kind of like haveing diffrent pants. they are all pants, but the fabric is diffrent.
in conclusion to this one, if someone could feel auras, and mistook their aura for their soul because the 'fabric' was strange, it would help explain what makes someone an otherkin.

as for the insanity prospect, i suffer from a mental condition that impares my ability of memory adn sometimes comprehension, so it could be that people with diffrent mental conditions from teh normal just have these crazy thuoghts. which is plausable, becuase im 100% sure that someday the earth will run into the sun because or the strong pull of gravity and teh possition of the universe. xd

and sorry about that. i should clarify, i didnt mean you only say it to look cool. i didnt doubt you had a good reason to think your an otherkin, i was just useing that prospect because, lets face it, there are people out there that do stuff like that. xd like the FLCL guys brilliant display of destroying matter. eer... bad example. a better one would be like..... have you ever seen teh comercial with 'the one upper'? he basicly tryed to say he was better then the one guy to impress someone.

does any of that help?
oh, and thanks for correcting me on the lycanthropy thing. i couldnt remember what it was called.
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Okay wait! I REALLY want to clarify something here.

See now, proving Otherkin is a silly thing to request. Mainly because one can't prove a soul. So if you can't prove a soul, how could you prove a difference between them? If there's no solid way to determin size, shape, look, feel, temperature, so on, of a soul then how could you tell a difference at all? That all lies in belief.

First, you have to believe you HAVE a soul. And some people out there truely don't. Once you believe you do, you're stuck with that word, "belief". As such, Otherkin is a belief structure. A belief structure can easily cause a religious structure and sometimes I worry that the Otherkin community is pushing more towards that than it should. Yes, Otherkin is classified as a spiritual belief, but it isn't a religion. However, one's faith in simply having a soul is the same faith one would have to have in believing a religion.

So! To summarize, a soul is a belief and cannot be proven. Otherkin is a belief in a more specific soul.

Now!

Auras are comprised of the energy of a person which are greatly influenced by their surroundings, health, emotional and mental state. A person's aura can change daily depending on the person. It can hold a base to it. It can be comprised of many different things. And it can be interpreted differently for different people. A simplistic person could have a content aura that relates to a simplistic and content animal if they share the same environment. Most factors influencing their auras are the same and would thus feel the same.

A person could confuse that similarity with a connection. I'm not saying that a person's aura can't be a sign for their type of soul though. If their animal (in any form: Otherkin, spirit animal, spirit guide) influences their every day habits and emotions, there could be a base comparability between them and a similar animal. However, the aura isn't something to go by. The aura of an abused dog is much different from a spoiled and pampered dog. As the same for humans, or any other being.

I suppose aura comparison could be used to HELP determine if one is an Otherkin, but it would have to be a controled experiment with a wide range of test subjects and an exact "part" of the aura one would be looking for.

So I guess, Don't rule auras out, but don't give them all the credit.

Also make note that a belief only become a mental disorder when the belief is taken far enough that actions are made that produce harmful results. And those results can be big or small. As long as someone realizes that it is their belief and still have a healthy grip on the world, I don't think it's anything to worry about or shun a person for. Everyone has lapses in their sense of reality, whether they admit to it or not. A person can blame it on anything, or atribute it to anything, but in the end it's just a moment. And moments always pass, whether we want them to or not.

Discovering one's self is a long and tedious process and by all rights, should never stop. I guess I could put it: The road to enlightenment is forever changing. (so poetic, yes? ^.^) Realizing that you are an Otherkin isn't an easy thing and takes a long time. Big things and many many little things lead to a conclusion and they're never the same from person to person. There is no manual or guide to it.

So if you think YOU are an Otherkin, go about proving it to yourself in ways you feel would prove it to you. You may discover more things about yourself than you initially planned. If you don't feel you could be an Otherkin, then it's likely you're not. But don't let doubt of the belief or worry of your actions and the reaction of others make that decision for you. And most of all, don't let Wishkin influence your outlook on the Otherkin community. In every aspect of the world there are always people to claim to be something they know nothing about. It's just a matter of recognising them.

Just remember, when dealing with beliefs, there is no manual.

read that..

as i said, auras feel diffrent from person to person, and from animal to animal... thanks for clarifying.

i should have clarified my use of teh word mental disorder.
my use of the word mental disorder is an irregularity in the mind. ill use myself for example: i have a lowered ability of remembering things, and sometimes forget what im about to say, and have a diffrent way of comprehending things then i otherwise would [without mental condition]. while this is a mental disorder, it doesnt lead me to do harmful things to myself emotionaly or phisicaly, even though i belive things diffrently then the 'normal people'.


this is almost exactly the way i think i should think, but then all my logicalyness leads me to belive that there is a way to proove the credibility to the idea of being otherkin. if you belive your otherkin though, i am not trying to put you down or make you feel bad, because it is your belife that your an otherkin. i suppose i might end up just going out and researching a way to find the answer i want:
is it possible to be an otherkin and proove it, or not?

also, i would like to state i dont like useing the word 'belief' to describe someones thoughts tword them being an otherkin because it makes it sound like something wrong, like someone that belives in giant spagettie monsters... though a crude example.