tea and darkness

gnosis of the personal unverifiable variety

[teaanddarkness]

Soft as the barest breath of wind,

a footfall in the gloom

Which of us is the hunter

in our dreams tonight?

What ghostfire lights the way

for our eyes only?

[eoinoconchobhair-deactivated201]

[fuckyeahnerdpr0n]

always reblog “good guy satan” meme

[nethilia]

chill ass bitch

[teaanddarkness]

Lost it at "Clothes"

This is relevant to my current research

[teaanddarkness]

As it Always Was, Is, Will Be There

A couple of weeks ago, my best friend came to visit. It was the first time in eight years that we had been together in this little corner of the country, where we both grew up, and the first thing we did was go to the park where we had spent so much of that time. It's a big park - many trails, bridges, creeks, you can walk for miles and only encounter one or two other people.

As we walked, it felt like nothing had changed. We recognized this tree, and that one. We both remarked on the curiously dreamlike atmosphere that grew around us the more we walked, the way we didn't have to talk to know when we wanted to stop, or what path to choose at a fork. It felt and looked unreal, and timeless. We had come back to a place that wasn't just a green spot on a map, that wasn't just a state park that hadn't changed much since we were in school together. It was coming back to a different sort of place too, a sense of home and being a part of a thing that felt like it had been there longer than the world had, and would last past the time when the individual trees and rocks and bodies of water were all dust.

We spent hours, most of which weren't talking, simply being a part of that current of life and green and growing things.

[grumpyreptile-deactivated201502]

Please reblog if you were a part of the otherkin & therianthropy community before tumblr. I want to know how many of us are out there.

[spiritus-sonne]

Found both communities in early ‘05 & joined both in some places that year. Didn’t come across…

[rialianashtae]

===Before otherkin was actually a term. I was not on the digest from the beginning…

[teaanddarkness]

Checking in. Definitely pre-tumblr, though all I really did 'community' wise was lurk on mailing lists and message boards before eventually going to kingathers.

[thegreenwolf]

When Meditation Becomes Mental Masturbation by Lupa (A Sense of Natural Wonder)

From the post:

I started spending too much time in my head, and would retreat into it as a defense against the anxiety, stress and other nasties that had plagued me for so long. I thought that if I could just tell my life story a little more clearly, I’d somehow be free of it, once that final piece was laid into place.

That’s not how it happened, of course. I just obsessed over my past more and more. More destructively, I was judging and measuring and nitpicking my every move and thought and trying to determine “Well, why am I doing this?” I was my own special little lab rat. I’d do a thing, and then I’d analyze it to death, and then I’d write up the “results”, usually on Livejournal. I don’t even want to think about how many pages-long posts of agonized processing I word-spewed onto the update page (thankfully hidden under LJ-cuts to spare my followers who didn’t give a crap what was going on in the deepest convolutions of my gray matter). It can basically all be summed up as “I THOUGHT ABOUT THIS THING FROM MY PAST BECAUSE I DID A THING NOW THAT REMINDED ME OF IT AND NOW I’M GOING TO TAKE AN EXACTO BLADE AND SLICE IT UP INTO TINY BITS AND SCRUTINIZE IT UNDER THIS MICROSCOPE AND LOOK AT HOW DEEP AND INTROSPECTIVE I AM EXCUSE ME WHILE I GO MEDITATE AND REFLECT AND PROCESS IT SOME MORE IT’S NOT MUSHY ENOUGH”.

So what happens when emotions get a little too processed? Read the rest of the post here.

[teaanddarkness]

I used to do things sort of like this - but for me it was often "once visited and understood, NEVER COME BACK AGAIN". I find that conscious mindfulness is awesome and for me most recently, meditation is less digging around for answers and more trying to empty my thoughts of unhelpful noise and focus/balance myself.

Well written, thank you <3

[androsthechill]

Preparing for Walking The Thresholds. Rialian and I are trying to email each other and apparently failing. I’ve gotten some advice that’s told me to batten down the hatches. And I have no clue WTF to expect. Blargh.

Incidentally, if anyone can tell me what I can expect...

[teaanddarkness]

Hey there, I've been going for the past ... 7 years oh dear, and I can certainly tell you what to expect. There's a long winding road from the main office (where you sign in and say hello to the 4QF staff) where you pass a few hills and plenty of woods, all the way down to the main campground which has a small parking area across from the shower/bathroom structure... that's right, hot showers and flush toilets, gone are the days of the portajohns. That structure is right next to a tent area that has coffee makers and chairs, and beyond that the road continues past a broad field to the right and more woods to the left... which hide a few interesting things. The past several years, people have been camping "topside" which means in that field to the right I just mentioned. A little tent village of nonhumans-and-their-friends-and-family appears in the mists for a few days and then is gone again. ^_^ Fire rings can be rented for, I think it's 15$ each, and trash is carry-your-own-out, but usually because there's not a millions of us we have coordinated efforts on that front. Beyond this field (there's a big maypole in the middle!) the road curves downwards and onwards to the bottom of the hill, where there are more camping areas, more showers and bathrooms, and various shrines along the creek. The member's-only camping area is this way too.

In practical terms for the gather itself, it's not always strictly organized. A lot of the time, when people have arrived, someone goes "oh, we were talking about energy and having demonstrations of how we all work differently with it" or someone asks someone else about something they know a lot about, like fox magic, or reiki, or food magic. There's almost always a night of bardic circle storytelling and song, and drum circle dancing around a big bonfire. It gets warm during the day and quite cool at night, so be sure to pack a range of clothing! In that topic, everyone tends to bring clothing that is very 'them' as well, not just practical camping things. Bring what you'd want to wear when running around in the woods with people who you can be absolutely your true self with. And probably bring a swimsuit too. And a towel, never forget a towel. Bugspray and sunscreen are also good ideas... As for food, well, it's definitely good to make sure you *can* survive on what you bring for the weekend but folks sometimes have extra to share. Things that are roast-able are definitely good!

On a batten down the hatches level, well, there's not really much to worry about from people but Thresholds does tend to be a unique experience. It's different in how it happens for everyone but to this day I'm still kind of mindblown from my first time there. Maybe it's the stars or the people or the place. Anyway, even if nothing like that happens, it's a lovely weekend in the mountains under the milkyway and moon. Hope to see you there!

[teaanddarkness]

Visit Original Link

Since the other one seemed to interest people, here is a spoken-word example of the babblespeak rather than sung. This was more of a test to see if it was possible to do this sort of thing on command rather than when someone jumped out from behind a bush to talk at me or whatever. 

I might try to record such encounters in the future, we'll see.

[teaanddarkness]

Visit Original Link

A few years old

[arcanetrivia]

Do you have a transcription of this? I have no idea what language it’s even in, heh.

[teaanddarkness]

Nope, and it's not in any 'language' really. I made a few of these recordings back when an elf I knew who was studying linguistics and anthropology wanted a few examples to study of the babblespeaking/singing some elves we knew did both on their own and at each other. She transcribed part of it, had a few interesting things to say about the sounds used, but never got far since it would have been an undertaking.

I find it a curiosity, since I never could sort out if it was language remnants or glossolalia or something else. I'll post another for anyone interested, but I do stress that they're hardly concrete things with translations or information to them.

[teaanddarkness]

Visit Original Link

A few years old

[teaanddarkness]

Elf Is A Gender

Some Words Regarding Gender Identity and Otherkin.

I'm going to sidestep the whole pronouns issue for a moment and talk about the meat behind that conversation. Let's talk identity. Otherkin and nonhumans in general are pretty keen on identity (and hopefully on thoroughly exploring concepts of the self before they write it all over the internet but we all know that's not always the case) and a lot of the time reconsidering human status makes people at least somewhat consider other things about themselves as well. Gender, sexuality, lifestyle choices, all are pretty firmly intertwined with identity for me and I would venture to say that's common. So when I say that Elf is a gender, I'm not talking about pronouns. Elves, in my experience, tend towards androgyny with a certain love and attention to aesthetic, however their personal tastes differ. Shorthand: we're pretty swishy too. Most, though not all I've met, fall somewhere in the fuzzy section of the kinsey scale. Elves are one place where all of my feminist ranting goes a little quieter because female-bodied elves tend to be what people expect and male-bodied elves take a lot of shit because they ping as 'too feminine' in our oh-so-enlightened modern culture. In this culture, male-bodied people are supposed to look a certain way, act a certain way, dress a certain way that is both restrictive of personal expression and unforgiving of perceived-femininity within those parameters. And female-bodied elves aren't particularly different from their male counterparts except they get a little more freedom to express that deeply important sense of personal aesthetic without being harassed... oh wait, never mind, we get harassed in different ways. And if we have teeth, if our words are sharp as knives, if we take no shit and don't play the role of behaviors expected of us for having different body parts, we get some pretty ugly treatment too. And none of it makes sense on any intuitive level because what we are, who we are, our individual elfy selves, tend to override those gender-constructs society has set for us. We're all of us a mix of pretty and handsome, but in an alien way, of parts that look good on their own but a little strange mashed together. It's not human-standard beauty. Like looking at something wild and strange, a lovely creature, not a "lovely man" or "lovely woman". Not a man, not a woman, but an elf. Not so much stress on those kinds of differences. Do I personally give a shit what pronouns people use for me? Not particularly. I am certainly not going to ask people to call me anything differently because of how I identify. That's me, though. Everyone else is obviously free to make their own judgments.

[dzukhaerun-deactivated20180302]

Otherkin and Therian List Updates

My reading list has been updated and cleaned up in presentation (using markdown now for writing this stuff).

My recommended otherkin IRC channel list has more channels, and a new section for IRCs specifically for therians/animal otherkin. :)

Most of my stuff is now being shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License. I’m going to migrate the smaller pages to it eventually.

[teaanddarkness]

Because it's useful for anyone looking.

[teaanddarkness]

Closets

Most of the people I've met who aren't human don't occupy a "HEY EVERYONE I'M NOT HUMAN" part of the internet. They work jobs across the spectrum. They have significant others, or not, pets, mortgages, and hobbies which only sometimes have overlapped with mine. I've had "that conversation" in a bar, in a field under the stars, in the lunchroom at gradeschool, on an island. (Eventually, if I'm close to someone, the subject comes up that I'm not human.) Sometimes I'm not the one to broach the subject. Sometimes I'm not the only one who isn't human. But rarely in those cases has there been much talk of an "otherkin community".

In my experience, telling people "I'm an elf" or variations on the them haven't caused much of a stir. Rather, whether it is because that single idea satisfies a bevvy of questions they didn't know quite how to ask, or because it offers a box to put me in, I have met with generally unremarkable acceptance. I've lived the past handful of years pretty divorced from the initial shock of the idea. But it bugs me that the welcoming gate to the concept is generally negative - so in that vein, though I'm new to writing about this stuff, ask me what you will, and I'll satisfy your curiosity or pique to the best of my ability.

[teaanddarkness]

In which Miss Darkness tells you about her Awakening

As an aside, I've met many other elves over the years, and not everyone relates to that identity the same way I do. That's not just okay, that's pretty awesome. It's awesome to meet others who relate to it similarly as well. In either case there's always something to talk about...

[dzukhaerun-deactivated20180302]

Are there any otherkin out there online that don’t solely relate or base their kin identities on past life experiences?

Read More

[liryenenderea-deactivated202001]

I am an elf type without past life memory stuff. Not sure how that came to be, but...

[teaanddarkness]

Obviously I don't solely relate to otherkin through past life experiences. And I think that part of the trouble with there being the kind of cliquishness that happens in the community, both around past lives and things like having a "pack" or a "clan" is that, most of us spent quite a long time feeling alone or isolated, a nonhuman among humans, and the instinct when first finding other nonhumans is to compare those similarities - so rare a chance before - and to celebrate them. That's fine, of course, but it can lead to weird groupings that aren't at all as open or welcoming of newness as their own uniqueness would lead a person to believe. I have friends who come from all over the spectrum, therians, vampires, and more mythic types of kin. Every one of them is awesome and has shown or taught me things I wouldn't have learned if we were exactly the same. There are very cool people out there, we just have to speak up and stand our ground about being ourselves in order to find each other. Mikh'to's discussion has raised a lot of points, and in some ways helped inspire me to start this blog which I'd been considering anyway. Too often the otherkin presence on the internet is defined only by the voices that speak up the loudest... which are not always the nicest, most balanced presentation of the experience of otherkin.

[teaanddarkness]

On past lives as a status symbol within the otherkin community

Many people who are coming into the community won't have the history to understand this, but there's a reason that having past lives is like some awkward shiny badge of acceptance in some circles. (Well, aside from people feeling the need to self validate through the opinions of others, which undermines any kind of validity such people aspire to.)

About a decade or so ago, it was the thing to do to record, down to meticulous detail, every scrap of memory and often to put it somewhere that others could read it. Less for proving individual prowess or specialty than in awe of such strange stories, and in attempt to cobble together through the bits and pieces of experience, some sort of visual fabric of what it was to be, to have been; the shock of common history was exciting, there was opportunity to compare, to contrast, to read the experiences and memories of others and see what jived and what didn't.

Somewhere along the lines, however, people began to see this sort of sharing as a necessary a part of being Otherkin. It's not. You can have feelings about a culture or a kintype without those feelings implying or being caused by memories. Is a human being any less a human being if they have no memories? Are you defined by what you remember when you were a child, or a teenager, or by what your parents taught you? Maybe yes, maybe no.

The point is, it's okay to be the way that you are, and it's really distressing to me to see people worrying that they don't have past life memories so they can't properly explore themselves-as-Otherkin, and it's really irksome to me to see self-proclaimed Elders implying that memories are necessary to truly understanding yourself. There are many, many paths to self-awareness and it's ridiculous to say or imply that one path is in any sense more valid than any other. To me, being otherkin is also about celebrating our differences. I'm much more interested in hearing about what someone else's experience is like if they're not trying to fit it into a little box they were told is 'THE WAAAAAAY'. Discussing past life stuff is okay too, personally I love hearing the stories other people have, and how those things have helped them to grow in the now. But it doesn't make anyone superior, or inferior. It's just another way of approaching self awareness.

[teaanddarkness]

Another Elf on Tumblr

I can't say by any stretch that this is one of my better ideas, but having been roused from my happy hermit ways, here I am. I'm going to post things on tumblr about being otherkin and about being an elf.

I'm not new to otherkin and I've lingered on the fringe of the so-called-community every once in a while. Bit of history: fifteen years ago, a girl I vaguely knew on the internet said she thought I might be otherkin. Ten years ago I met my best friend and Awakened properly - after knowing for those five years that I was certainly "other" but not having anything like a solid definition of what I *was*. It's true that no one can tell you what you are. True that no one can even verify it for you. I include this timeline to point out that it sometimes takes a really, really long time to sort out properly who and what you are.

So that's ten going on eleven years that I've called myself an elf. I started to do so because of past life rememberings, but you know what? It doesn't end there, and for me at least, that past life stuff was very personal and served to teach me fairly personal lessons and let me deal with baggage that would have otherwise been quite obnoxious to carry around. It isn't what makes me an elf. Elf for me, is a culture, a mindset, a flow. There are cute little catchphrases like 'psychological kin' but that seems limiting to me and fairly one dimensional as well. Nonetheless, it is both intensly psychological as an experience and intensely spiritual. More to follow. Anyway, hi.