Otherkin encyclopedia topics

Otherkin 'Characteristics'

Otherkin often claim to feel phantom nonhuman limbs. For example, a dragonkin may feel that they have horns, wings, and/or a tail. Angels may feel their wings. Otherkin also claim to remember past lives as their original being.

History of the Otherkin Community

The oldest Internet resource for otherkin is the Elfinkind Digest; a mailing list started in 1990 by R'ykandar Korra'ti at the University of Kentucky for "elves and interested observers". Also in the early 1990s, newsgroups such as alt.horror.werewolves and alt.fan.dragons on Usenet, which were initially created for fans of these creatures in the context of fantasy and horror literature and films, also developed followings which identified as mythological beings.

On 6 February 1995, a document entitled the Elven Nation Manifesto was posted to Usenet, including the groups alt.pagan and alt.magick. On Usenet itself, the document was universally panned and considered to be either a troll or an attempt to frame an innocent party. However, enough people contacted the original author of the Elven Nation post in good faith for a mailing list to spin off from it.

The modern otherkin subculture grew out of these elven online communities of the early-to-mid-1990s, with the earliest recorded use of the term otherkin appearing in July of 1990 and the variant otherkind being reported as early as April 1990. The therian, vampire, and draconic subcultures are related to the otherkin community somewhat, and are considered part of it by most otherkin, but are culturally distinct movements of their own despite some overlap in membership.

References in Popular Culture

Most references to otherkin outside of their own subculture take place in the context of neopagan and vampire literature. In addition to the sources referenced elsewhere in this article, otherkin have been referred to in the following metaphysical sources:

The Psychic Vampire Codex, The Vampire Ritual Book, and Psychic Dreamwalking by Michelle Belanger.
Real Energy by Phaedra and Isaac Bonewits.
The re-enchantment of the west by Christopher Hugh Partridge.
Booksources/0738704709 by Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein.
Booksources/9781905713066 and Booksources/9781905713141 by Taylor Ellwood.

Otherkin have also been mentioned in two academic books on religion: Cults and New Religious Movements by Lorne L. Dawson, and Religion Online by Dawson and Douglas E. Cowan, in an anthropology course at Hofstra University, and in the following works of fiction: