Otherkin News

May 28, 2009: Religion Dispatches (an online magazine est. 2008) ran an article about an upcoming book on the vampire community, Joseph Laycock’s Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires.  He says he’d planned to include a chapter on therians and otherkin as well, but he had to discard it.  The article does define them a little, so here’s the relevant part:

“As it turns out, there are many groups of people who consider themselves to be ontologically different from normal humans. There are people who identify with angels, fairies, wolves, etc. […] The other chapter that was cut concerned related communities. “Therians” have their own community for individuals who feel they have a connection to a particular animal. They relate to legends of lycanthropes and shape-shifters in the same way that modern vampires relate to the vampire of folklore. “Otherkin” is a blanket term that includes numerous categories of people who see themselves as ontologically different from other people. Many otherkin identify as elves, faeries, or dragons but the variety of “types” seems to be almost infinite. Like vampires, therians and otherkin point to changes in modernity that have facilitated the emergence of new and meaningful identity groups.”