Essays: Personal Mythology

Essay originally posted to my personal journal on October 3rd, 2007.

When people within the otherkin and therianthropy communities ask me what and how I identify as a nonhuman entity in a human form, I generally smile and respond by explaining that I identify both as a supernatural entity as well as a 'common' flesh-and-blood creature, independent of the human condition. If you're reading this you might already be familiar with the otherkin subculture, though just for some background, I define someone who is 'otherkin' as anyone who identifies as something other than human, that something being supernatural or mythical in origin. I define a Therianthrope as anyone who identifies as an Earth-based critter, though I have noticed some overlap in how others use these terms. This is merely how I choose to define them. I identify as both, and this is where my personal mythology steps in to explain, exactly, why.

Cusm has this to say about mythology: "The purpose of mythology is to explain one’s origins and place in the world, and offer answers to questions of how the world functions around us." He goes on to explain his definition of a personal mythology: "A Personal Mythology is any story explaining one’s personal spiritual origins or identity. It may not even be a story, so much as an internal understanding. For as a story creates an internal reality, so too is an internal reality expressed as a story, even if it is never actually told." My personal mythology helps explain what makes, or has made me who I am. Being personal, I am never apt to reveal all of it, but I do reveal enough to help people understand why I am the way I am. This story is a telling of events I believe to have happened in my spiritual past. These events are real to me, though I do not expect them to be real to anyone else, nor would I be able to provide proof of such, any more than a Christian would be able to prove the events in the Bible did actually occur with any empirical evidence. That said, like the Bible it helps guide my spiritual outlook on life, and binds my own inner truths close to my being. As with past life workings, this is a fine line to walk, the line between empowerment and inner truth, and delusionment and escapism.

Before I go further, its important to note that I am not a person who considers time to be a linear thing. That said, linear time is important for the telling of a good story. Humans need sequences of events to piece together for things to make sense. These events, in my mind and memory, I have deliberately arranged to form a sequence, though in reality the truth may be far more complicated. This is one of many reasons why I keep my salt shaker in hand and my Occam's Razor well sharpened. Human memory is a tricky thing even when dealing with those memories that are maybe only hours old. To interpret memories from another world and another time, and as another entity, can be an interesting feat. Cultural and biological factors come into play, facts can get distorted. There is constant work to sort wheat from chaff, and at the same time prevent oneself from becoming to engrossed on what once was or what could have been. Personal mythologies and stories should help one live in the present and plan for the future, and not become so lost in the past that one forgets what is directly ahead of them.

My personal mythology 'began' in Japan, though events might have gone on prior to me 'coming' there. I was born a 'reiko', which is what most people would probably mistake for a 'kitsune'. Whereas 'kitsune' is a term simply meaning 'fox', a 'reiko' is a 'supernatural fox', an entity someone might also refer to as a 'fox-fairy ('huli-jing', in Chinese) or a 'fox-spirit'. This is the one people would think of as shapeshifting, possessing multiple tails, and occasionally glowing in the dark. That's what I did, well at least some of the time. Our 'culture' as it where, was based strongly off of human mimicry, and living parallel or sometimes overlapping with the human culture(s) in that region. We where too wild to fit into human society, but too sentient and intelligent to be counted among the more flesh-and-blood foxes. I begin to wonder if we where more 'fox-like' rather than a type of fox, but that's a tangent for a later time. In any case, at some point during my life there, after I was on my second tail (that would bring me at about 200 years old in reiko-years) I left my family and clan, for reasons that are yet a mystery to me. I always fancied myself a nomadic-type critter, and thats perhaps one of possibly many circumstances that led me to leave my family and go off on my own. I did not do this without a personal transformation of sorts. Reiko are known for their shapeshifting and mimicry. Aside from humans, the beings that seemed to be greatest in number in our world where the wolves, the okami and the yamainu. I was closely drawn to them. I studied them and lived among them, which isn't too surprising after having read of Ainu tales of foxes marrying into wolf clans, as evidenced in the story of a fox-prince who saved the wolf clan and the humans from a demon of disease and starvation using magical arrows, and later marrying into the wolf clan. I can't say I married into them, more like assimilated with them, eventually becoming one of them, almost indistinguishable from the next. As a yamainu I lived, struggled and howled with them, and when the last wolves of Japan died out, I passed along with them.

This brings us to the present...but not entirely. I may have lived other lives on the way, or otherwise assimilated into myself some sort of race memory, of other members of the genus canis before settling into a human form. I believe I am something similar to what has been termed a 'cladotherian', a therianthrope who possesses the traits or associations of more than one animal, usually of the same genus, but not always. For me that genus is canis, and in specific I have kept mostly on a continuum of wolfish-dog to doggish-wolf. In being born into this world, Coyote has taken me and has become a totem that I have later internalized as yet another so-called 'therioside'. My default setting now is a therianthropic one, and to save on confusion I generally tell people that I am a 'canine shapeshifter' to avoid possible confusion or weird looks. I see my 'therioside' as a very important part of the now. The animals and entities I relate to are either still alive, or their close relatives are. Coyote is a symbol of my life as it is in the here and now, and 'wolfdog' describes my psychological and emotional existence. As I grow in this life and discover more about myself, my personal mythology evolves along with it, as does the personal mythology of my twin brother and headmate Duo, who I've shared a number of existences and brotherhoods of some form with.

So you've gotten to the bottom of this thing, and probably think that Solo is either a colorful person or a nutball, or potentially both. Either one doesn't bother me too much. If I am a nutball (and I very well may be) I'm a relatively harmless one, and who's to say the nutball doesn't have some form of truth to his disjointed rambling?

Resources, to whet your whistle:
Cusm, on Personal Mythologies and Worlds Within: http://www.barbelith.com/topic/27109
A Field Guide To Otherkin, By Lupa
Kitsune Information: http://kitsune.heliwood.org