frameacloud: A white dragon with its tail in a knot. (Heraldry transparent)
[personal profile] frameacloud
Content warnings: None.

October: Most of the resources for the therianthrope and otherkin communities are in English. Language barriers are a problem for the communities. Groups that speak different languages remain somewhat isolated from each other. Some people in the communities are working hard at improving this situation by translating the resources into other languages.

Mistwolf just finished translating a book of therianthrope and otherkin history into Spanish. That book is my Otherkin Timeline. (In Spanish, it is called the Cronología Otherkin.) Mistwolf is a responsible translator, and we talked together a lot to make sure that the translation was right. Since it is a history, it will help more translators figure out which valuable resources should get translated next.

The Cronología Otherkin is now in some Spanish-language otherkin sites, including Noctalium and Otherkin Hispano. It is also available in the format of PDF on my personal site.

- Orion Scribner
frameacloud: A white dragon with its tail in a knot. (Heraldry transparent)
[personal profile] frameacloud
Content warnings: Witch trial (not graphic).

August 14: EsoterX, a blog about monsters, posted an article about the history of werewolves in Livonia (a region in Europe). The most famous of these is Theiss, who in his unique 1662 werewolf trial testified that he was one of the good "Werewolves of God," now understood to have been a shamanic secret society. EsoterX's article isn't new research, but it's a decent introduction to an intriguing part of history.

Several therianthrope authors connect Theiss to their own experiences. Wolf therianthrope Rosalyn Greene, in her argument for the worldwide antiquity and supernatural abilities of therianthropes, gave Theiss's spiritual practices as an example of astral shifting (Greene, The Magic of Shapeshifting, p. 137-138), comparing it with similar traditions elsewhere. Another wolf therianthrope, Wolf VanZandt, included Theiss in his Therian Timeline, which offers more sources on Theiss.

Source


EsoterX, "I Saw a Werewolf Drinking a Piña Colada in the Duchy of Livonia, and His Hair was Perfect." 2013-08-14. EsoterX. http://esoterx.com/2013/08/14/i-saw-a-werewolf-drinking-a-pina-colada-in-the-duchy-of-livonia-and-his-hair-was-perfect/
frameacloud: A white dragon with its tail in a knot. (Heraldry transparent)
[personal profile] frameacloud
Trigger warnings: Religion. Dragon-slaying. Dangerous bodies of water.

July: An anthropologist called EsoterX, in their blog of research about monsters in mythology and folklore, posted a new research article about dragon-slaying in medieval France. EsoterX argues that the "dragons" in these myths were, in reality, dangerous bodies of water, such as floods and whirlpools. In allegory, the saints "slew" these "dragons" by building levees. Later, the allegory was lost, and the myths were taken literally.

This article is not about otherkin. However, it could be of interest to otherkin who identify as dragons, or for whom dragons figure significantly in their spirituality or personal mythology.


Source


EsoterX, "Dragons Check In, But They Don’t Check Out: Saintly Medieval Pest Control in France." 2013-07-21. EsoterX: If Monsters Don't Exist, Why Are They Out To Get Me? http://esoterx.com/2013/07/21/dragons-check-in-but-they-dont-check-out-saintly-medieval-pest-control-in-france
frameacloud: A white dragon with its tail in a knot. (Heraldry transparent)
[personal profile] frameacloud


Trigger warnings: None.

June 18: The House of Chimeras created a video, "History of the Therian Community: Part 1 - 1993 to 1995," shown above. The Chimeras are a multiple system that includes therianthropes and otherkin. As a personal project and labor of love, the Chimeras researched, illustrated, and narrated this documentary about the origins of the therianthrope community. It focuses only on the therianthrope community, not on otherkin, which shows the difference between those communities.

In my opinion, the Chimeras' research is solid and highly detailed, and the illustrations are communicative and beautiful. It shows that a lot of work went into this. It's good to have such an engaging educational resource for newcomers who aren't clear yet about the history of therianthropy. Thank you all for making this wonderful video, Chimeras.

- O. Scribner


Source


"History of the Therian Community: Part 1 - 1993 to 1995." 2013-06-18. http://youtu.be/H9Y-YaRS0Go or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9Y-YaRS0Go
frameacloud: A white dragon with its tail in a knot. (Heraldry transparent)
[personal profile] frameacloud
Trigger warnings: none that I can think of.

November 15, 2011, Wales. The red dragon on the Welsh flag refers to an event from Arthurian legend, supposedly having taken place around the 5th century. In a battle between two dragons, the defending red dragon conquered the invading white dragon, which witness Merlin interpreted as a good omen.

The Arthurian legends often specify real locations where legendary events occurred. According to the legend, the dragon battle happened at the hill of Dinas Emrys, which is located in what is now an area of largely fallow farmland called Llyndy Isaf.

This November, the National Trust successfully raised £1 million to purchase Llyndy Isaf in order to protect it from commercial developers. It will be preserved for future generations as a wilderness area and park, with hiking trails and camp sites.

- O. Scribner

Sources


Welsh flag depicting red dragon.

Steven Morris, “Llyndy Isaf farm in Wales saved by National Trust after £1m appeal.” November 15, 2011. The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/16/llyn-dinas-saved-by-national-trust

Image shown is the Welsh flag. This rendition by Tobias Jakobs is from a free open source clip art gallery, OpenClipArt.org. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Wales_2.svg
frameacloud: A green dragon reading a book. (Default)
[personal profile] frameacloud
Just published this year: a new expanded second edition of Steiger’s The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shape-Shifting Beings. The first edition (from 1999) included a paragraph about the therianthrope community of the newsgroup alt.horror.werewolves in the entry for “Howls,” but didn’t mention anything about the therianthrope philosophy that originated in that group. I do not know whether Steiger includes anything about therianthrope philosophy in the second edition.

Sources )
frameacloud: A white dragon with its tail in a knot. (Heraldry transparent)
[personal profile] frameacloud
Trigger warnings for this article: loss of information. Work-safe.

From its foundation in 1994, and until its shut-down in 2009, GeoCities was a popular free host for personal web sites.1  Among these, there were some sites about otherkin and therianthropes.  Before they disappeared, I searched for those sites and archived them, as detailed in my first and second articles on the topic.2,3  Now, the next step: I’ve tried to contact all the site authors to find out where—or whether—their content will migrate.  If you’re wondering where to look for them now, check the list in the rest of this post.  I’ll update the list if I hear anything new. 

Read List )

frameacloud: A white dragon with its tail in a knot. (Heraldry transparent)
[personal profile] frameacloud
Trigger warnings for this article: information loss. Work-safe.

Last April, Geocities announced that it would shut down its website hosting service, but it gave no date.1  The deadline has now been given: Geocites will shut down on October 26, 2009.2  You don’t have long to archive your favorite sites on Geocities.  How can this be done most efficiently?  What sites might you want to save?

If Firefox3 is the web browser that you use, you can quickly find Geocities sites in your bookmarks (favorites) with an add-on such as Enhanced Bookmark Search4.  If you usually browse the web with Internet Exporer instead, you could import Explorer’s bookmarks into Firefox, in this way: in Firefox’s menu, go to Bookmarks, Organize Bookmarks, File, Import.

This isn’t the quickest way, but you could download the sites manually, by hitting the “Save” button on each page within a site.  (In most browsers, “Save” will be in the menu on the upper left, under “File.”  The drawbacks to this method: it’s tedious, and it doesn’t capture web page elements made with Cascading Style Sheets.  CSS is included in downloads made by a Firefox add-on called Save Complete.5)

It would be faster to download sites automatically using a program to do the work for you, such as an offline browser.  I tried HTTrack Website Copier6, and I was sufficiently satisfied with its results that I didn’t try out some of the other free offline browsers I’d noticed in a Google search.  (The others were Webreaper, Wget, and PageNest.7)  HTTrack is a GPL offline browser for the operating systems Windows and Linux. HTTrack is easy to use: you give it an url (website address), or even a whole list of urls in a text file.  (I’ll provide such a list at the end of this article.  This method is the fastest because it requires less of your involvement, but it can cause problems with sites that don’t have an index page.)  Then, all by itself, the program downloads the entire site, including the sub-pages, pictures, and anything else it finds in there.

After you download a back-up of a site, make sure you skim through it to make sure it’s all there.  Sometimes Geocities says “Service temporarily unavailable,” and so those pages will fail to download.  There are a couple of reasons why this problem is happening: maybe Geocities is getting overloaded with traffic because everyone is rushing for their last chance to download their favorite sites… or maybe Geocities’ service has always been unstable. 

If your own website was hosted by Geocities, I hope you’re planning to move to another web host.  Free web hosts are more common these days, so you can choose among them for the traits that suit you the best.  The daily-updated website http://www.free-webhosts.com8 is a good way to compare free web hosts.

You can use Google to comb Geocities for web sites on specific topics.  Type in your search terms, and then include the words “site:geocities.com” in that search (without the quotes).

 I spent more time trying out keywords that could bring up sites on therianthropes and otherkin,9 animal-people and persons who consider themselves to be other than human, often in spirit.  I discovered many more sites in addition to those that I described in my previous article.   I have archived all the following Geocities sites, so if you miss out on this, you can ask me for a copy of the ones that you need. Read more... )

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Otherkin News

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Otherkin News is a collaborative, volunteer-run blog for sharing news for otherkin, therianthropes, fictionfolk, plural systems, and all sorts of alterhumans. You can join and post here about current events in our communities and newspaper articles that are about us. The person moderating this is [personal profile] frameacloud. Everyone is welcome to subscribe and explore our tags.

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