A response to THIS ARTICLE:
"An Historical Overview of the Whereabouts of Gnomes and Elves, Fauns and Faeries, Goblins, Ogres, Trolls and Bogies, Nymphs, Sprites, and Dryads, Past and Present."
((http://otherkin.net/wiki/Manual/BecauseHumansLostTheirWay))
As posted in the Otherkin Alliance forum.
Perhaps illusionary, as the world of culture---and the perceptions of reality that we're taught by members of our cultures? Then the 'real' world is the world, as it is, regardless of our assumptions...
In the context of this essay especially... what I believe is being said.
"Now we know that everything that has ever existed continues to exist, in one form of another, and as far as we can tell, they were more aware of that back then than we are now. So the sacrifice, song, praise and prayer did not ensure the immortality of the slaughtered, either in body or in spirit. That was already taken care of. What it did ensure was the continuance of the connection between the spirit of the slaughterer and the spirit of the slaughtered."
A spiritual understanding of the world in which all things are eternal, and exist as parts of a web---they can change, and shift, but nothing is ever truly lost----it may simply depart from this physical reality, and cease to reside in the connections of this reality.
"When we lose those connections, everything becomes dead - fish, rivers, frogs, mice, even each other. There is no way they can reach inside us any more."
Ties and memory and spirit are not the same as physical ties, ties of physical reality---okay, so one or the other may cease to physically exist. That doesn't make it gone; this is much the same as the saying that a loved one who dies isn't ever truly gone, but remains in your heart.
What's being said here could be... everything, the entire world, is loved, and remains forever in the hearts of every other part of the world.
"And we are all under the impression that it is the forests, the creatures, the spirits, and the wildlands that are disappearing from the universe and not us."
The cultural, scientific understanding of the world says that the forests are physically being destroyed----in part due to the actions of humans----and that these are disappearing from the world.
"It is we who have fallen away from the real world into a world where we may carry out our twisted sterile dreams without threatening the Earth and its inhabitants."
The spiritual understanding is not to focus on the physical reality alone, but to focus on the ((spiritually more important)) destruction of the connections between humans and the rest of the world.
Society creates an idea, an ideal, of what the world is---and attempts to enforce this ideal upon the physical reality.
These ideals change from culture to culture, time to time, and not all societies do so. Much of what's discussed in this article is the shift of human cultures, human understandings, from living within the world as a part of the world.... to living on the world as externally placed beings, humans that are adjusting the world, this THING, to whatever ideal we choose to force it into.
The conclusion that this author comes to...
is that otherkin are people, beings, who are spiritually aware of the world and feel connected to it.
When otherkin come into being as humans, they don't possess all their memories of alternate lives, and may live much the same as any other humans around them.
But many...
"They may have no idea who or what they are at first. They may or may not find out. They will know that they are not like everyone else. They will know that this world is not theirs. They will faintly remember something better, where things made sense and worked like they ought to, where love and magic had the power to heal."
The rest of the paper is in description of the broad range of reactions otherkin have to this societal-world and this spiritual-world, and the differences perceived between the two.
Next Entry: Philosophic Book of Shadows Entry 1
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