I know there’s a whole magic section, but this is a question for the otherkin:
Do you know of any specifically nonhuman forms of magic?
The main one I know of from the myths is faerie glamour. Â And I know that the modern otherkin community has spawned the practice of “glamourbombing”.
We’ve also applied some mutations to Reiki that have come to be known as “Otherkin Reiki”, but I’m not sure it’s evolved to the point that it’s specifically otherkin just yet or if it’s just a few tools useful to otherkin that have been tacked on.
I’ve also been exposed to two “elven healing currents” that were somewhat similar to Reiki but with a slightly different feel.Â
Anything else out there?
Not specifically nonhuman magic, unless… see discussions on extraterrestrial humanity or what comes close to it. But in the general vicinity of my home, there was a particular type of magical technology that was used and researched on by all the humanoid species around, basically whoever had the talent, the brains, and the opportunity to make it into the circles. Note, I wasn’t one of them, and so I can’t explain much about it at all. But it did land me in the identity condition and with the biography that I got through various instances, so it was definitely a relevant factor of my life. I don’t think it is anything applicable here though, and that might not be such a bad thing. Our old world was enough really.
Hmm I’d say so, without knowing too many specifics myself, partly based on the things that were possible. I think that world must have allowed for a lot more manipulation, or else people developed something that is not to be found here so far.
There was a strong tie-in with technology and physics, which I think some people on this world do to some degree, but I don’t know enough about that yet – that’s actually something I’m interested in looking at, out of sheer curiosity, how much it resembles what we had.
I think I see a difference in general tendencies from the mainstream magic here of several traditions, where one works with an integrative approach of body and mind, and tries to act with the whole of it, holistic approaches etc. – correct me if I’m wrong. Also including nature a lot of the time. In our place the approach was to separate them further, and work on that, attempting to eliminate the need for the body, nature, the physical world. Because they were endangered and continuously taking damage. So instead of healing type magic for that, and becoming one with nature etc, the trend went strongly towards not relying on them anymore at all, in particular with those who were more in the know about the bad state of the physical world.
This is one of those things I intend maybe, eventually, no someday, really, to try to make coherent sense out of in myself and post some things on my website about. Over the course of about, hm, eight years now, I’ve been scribbling and revising and throwing away notes that are materials towards a “faery craft”, which is of necessity a hybrid between my attempts to Remember magical forms we actually use(d) with human forms of Pagan spiritual practice and witchcraft. I say “of necessity” because there are certain structures and forms the human body/consciousness-complex seems to need or work better with and while one of my goals is to work on subtly shifting the whole mess more towards the sidhe energies, as things are now, certain Stuff just doesn’t want to Go, it seems. If you are interested, I have some older and unorganized versions of things on the Pagan page on my website (http://eristic.net/pagan/ – sorry anyone else reading this that I don’t know, but it is kinda private and woo-woo stuff!).
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Species-specific stuff aside, I’ve noticed in my experience that even very mixed-type groups of otherkin (such as at gathers) give off and want a very different Form or Feel to workings, and that rituals that adhere closely to regular neo-Pagan forms (drawing circles, calling quarters…) often can fall flat. (I’ve got no input on how Christian or Buddhist or Jewish or whatever rituals mesh, but Pagan forms are often used because a lot of the otherkin community likes magic or New Age or occult stuff and is at least non-JudeoChristian.) I have not yet been able to put my finger on what it is exactly about otherkin that has this effect and demands different approaches.
Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:
I know there’s a whole magic section, but this is a question for the otherkin:
Do you know of any specifically nonhuman forms of magic?
The main one I know of from the myths is faerie glamour. Â And I know that the modern otherkin community has spawned the practice of “glamourbombing”.
Flow magicks as described by a few elves, might fall into this category. The right push at the right time changes the row of dominoes which begins to fall. I do not know how many Others this particular system applies to, but I know of four or five who agreed during the discussion.
Our particular forms of technomagick and biomagick do not seem to correspond to the systems used by any other practitioners we have met.
I've heard other elves making a big deal out of working with the flows, but I'm honestly not convinced that it's unique to us (or Others in general). Â In the form it's generally described, it's just seeing probabilities and working with them. Â Any card counter in Vegas can do that, we just apply it in a different context. Â And the idea of knowing when to act to create the greatest result from the least effort is a fundamental principle of Taoist philosophy.
Then again, I'm also coming to think that viewing flow-working as probability manipulation is a vast oversimplification.  We see patterns, connections, relationships.  We can work with those relational networks, of which the temporal/probabilistic relationship is only one aspect.  Not just elven Others, and elves may not even be the best at it.  Most modern, Western humans I'd say do have the capacity just as much as we do, but may not exercise it or be used to a world-view that emphasizes it.  I'm reminded of the way that speakers of some foreign languages which only have one word for both the color blue and the color green actually come to perceive less difference between them than speakers of languages with a word for each.
I just realized that I left out a fairly big one, though I'm not entirely sure what to call it. Â “Singing” magic. Â By this, I don't necessarily mean anything vocal or musical in the normal sense. Â I'm not talking about Bardic magic here. Â This magic (according to what I believe) stems originally from a time before there were physical forms to sing in a mundane sense. Â It's more like… allowing your soul to resonate? Â And yet, in other ways it's like weaving, or dancing.
Oo er, yes. That… that tickles something in my brainmeats. I dunno that I’d compare it to weaving or dancing, but it’s definitely a whole-locus vibration. (“locus” being my term for analogy to the physical body – the field-of-presence of a non-physical being)
Arethinn said:
Oo er, yes. That… that tickles something in my brainmeats. I dunno that I'd compare it to weaving or dancing, but it's definitely a whole-locus vibration. (“locus” being my term for analogy to the physical body – the field-of-presence of a non-physical being)
Me neither, Singing seems closest to me, but I've seen others use the other two analogies and I can sort of grok them if I turn my head right and squint. Â Â Actually, if anyone has ever seen Earth Final Conflict, there's some stuff with the Taelons in that which kind of makes me think of it. Â (Then again, Taelons are also a fictional race much like the Minbari in that they've always made me go “Space Elves!” even though they really don't look especially elven.)
And locus works… I use the term soul, but what I'm really getting at is that it's one's essence… one's core and what emanates from it. Â “Presence” is a good descriptor too.
Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:
Most modern, Western humans I'd say do have the capacity just as much as we do, but may not exercise it or be used to a world-view that emphasizes it. Â I'm reminded of the way that speakers of some foreign languages which only have one word for both the color blue and the color green actually come to perceive less difference between them than speakers of languages with a word for each.
Terrence McKenna once said that the universe was comprised of language. The means by which we describe our perceptions will eventually limit our perceptions.
Jarandhel Dreamsinger said:
I agree. Â It's one of the reasons I've paid a lot of attention to recovered language… I'm looking especially for words which express concepts we don't have in English, or which would take entire paragraphs of English to describe comparably.
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I was thinking along similar lines, but I tend not to attach “singing” or “dancing” to it (like what pagans do around campfires). To me it is more like a pulse or a frequency. Listen to some of the sound frequencies from space, that tends to be similar to how I parse it, personally.
From being in a noncorporeal form, Arethinn's description of a “field-of-presence of a non-physical being” is also a lot how we recall it. A field with a more-or-less distinct form and some amount of simulation of physicality, but essentially energetic in nature nevertheless.
While the transportation/transmutation process itself probably involved some kind of magic or other, we didn't do any particular goal-oriented magig once we were in that form, but terms of resonation and “pulse” and “frequencies” as Tenshi said also come close. The “weaving” Jarin mentions is a metaphor I'd use for the energetic in-system interaction while in that form, the specific interaction between two partly merged people.
So that's what we can relate to in the English terms used here so far. And we still fail badly at expressing the experience in any language we speak. Once I tried writing it down for myself, just to see if I could express it and pin it down in words, and gave up frustrated.
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