Their legends were MADNESS!!! o.O

Did you ever stop to think about the possibility that the 17th century werewolf myth isn’t some drug induced madness, but the period’s version of our modern furries and otherkin?

In the modern day, lots of historians speculate about bad bread filled with psilocybes and whatnot, but maybe people who thought they were werewolves were just interested in identifying with an animal totem, much like the modern furry or otherkin.

Furthermore, what if their rituals of applying ointments and donning skin to dance around a fire was their equivalent of a convention? Is this any different from the guy who gets drunk, pulls on a wolf costume, and spends the rest of the night chasing a rabbit he’s never known before? What I’m suggesting is, what if these modern day animal-people represent a less violent evolution of the real lycanthropy sufferers of the 17th century?

Sure, the idea always sounds silly to someone who is comfortable with just being a human being, but many people yearn to be something more than just humans. The desire to attach a higher meaning to our life is, shall we say, diverse in the ways people choose to attach that sense of meaning.

People point to an otherkin and say, “Now that guy is too crazy! He thinks he’s half human and half dragon! Ha!”

Yeah, he’s so crazy, and not at all like all the sane people who believe that a cracker is sacred when a guy with a funny hat blesses it. Not at all like the people who believe in a fiery pit where all the bad people get what’s coming to them. Why no, those crazy otherkin aren’t expressing their personal beliefs through something rational like white castles in the clouds. Instead they believe something stupid and irrational, that they have a part of a mystical spirit lurking inside them. And that is just whack, and not at all normal.

Or is it? Is it so unusual, and the otherkin just now showed up over the last few years? Or is it more likely that we just didn’t notice them before the Internet gave them the opportunity to group together, like all the other wierdos and perverts? (Like me and “my peeps,” for instance.)

People comfort themselves in all kinds of crazy ways to help them cope with life, and with death. So some people want to believe in psychic readings and past lives. Some people want to believe that they are space aliens destined for greater things. It’s all in what you need to make it through the day. If it makes you happy, and it doesn’t hurt anyone else, then is it really crazy? As crazy as believing in an eternal selective country club called heaven, or in a selectively loving God?

Personally, I do believe in God, and I really want to believe in heaven. The problem for me is, I think there may also be something to reincarnation, and so I think maybe there isn’t a final resting place until we’re all dead. This belief in God does not make me insane, and most everyone will agree on that point. (Except for Atheists of certain mindsets who feel that any belief in God is still a mild form of insanity. I ignore them, because I know they’re crazy.)

But I also frequently acknowledge that I am crazy. On the one hand, this is good, because it makes me inventive and highly creative. On the other hand, it also requires that I keep myself busy constantly, because lulls in activity bring bad mood swings. They say the devil is in idle hands, and if mine ain’t typing, then there’s trouble to follow soon afterward. I know this, and so this is why I’m always writing. I’m keeping my hands–and the voices in my head–busy.

This is why when asked if I think the otherkin are crazy, I have to ask myself, Are they really crazier than me?

So when you meet an otherkin or a furry, before you deride them, think about what you believe to get yourself through each day. You should reflect on how in the 17th century, the otherkin would have called themselves lycanthropes. Then consider that their fellow humans believed their claims, and those supposedly rational people believed that the only way to help the lycathropes was to set them on fire. Now those was some crazy motherfuckers right there! Who would encourage that kind of sheer stupidty?

Oh right, that would be the same guys who still live in Rome. You know, the men in dresses who dictate moral behavior to millions of people and lay claim to being able to bar people from heaven, just because they say so. The same people who historically set werewolves on fire for real are still in power. In fact, modern people still consider them more sane than the guy who thinks he’s half dragon.

How’s that otherkin guy looking now?

And you? The worst you’re ever going to do to the modern otherkin is snidely comment, “Nice wings, loser.” The otherkin will of course call that persecution…

You know what? I changed my mind. Go ahead and make fun of them too. Buncha freakin’ loonies.