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Where did all the Healers go?
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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
Arlington, VA

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Monday, 26th July, 2010 - 3:21 pm
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Back when I first joined the otherkin community, it seemed like there were a lot of people who self-identified as Healers.  I don't mean just people who practice healing modalities like Reiki, we've still got plenty of those, I mean people who considered that their primary calling in life.  At this point, off the top of my head, I can think of only one person I still hang out with who considers themselves a Healer in that sense, and maybe two or three others I know but don't get to hang out with much these days.

Re-reading some old list archives for an article I'm working on (on an entirely different subject), and it just got me thinking… what happened to them all?

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Arethinn
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Monday, 26th July, 2010 - 5:52 pm
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You know, that’s a good question. I wonder if it’s a casualty of the sort of “oh get a grip, not everything in life has to be woo-woo all the time” opinion-shift that seems to have occurred in the parts of the otherkin community I observe (granted it can tend to sound a little like something out of an RPG), and/or the shift away from living/discussing magical lifestyles (in public, at least).

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
Arlington, VA

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Monday, 26th July, 2010 - 6:06 pm
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Arethinn said:

You know, that's a good question. I wonder if it's a casualty of the sort of “oh get a grip, not everything in life has to be woo-woo all the time” opinion-shift that seems to have occurred in the parts of the otherkin community I observe

I'm not sure… could be, or maybe it's just the result of life… I know time and pain have hardened my heart to the point that I would find it very hard to consider myself a true Healer these days, as much as I might sometimes wish to act in that role.  Perhaps that indicates a need for self-healing…

(granted it can tend to sound a little like something out of an RPG)

I can certainly see the comparison, but I never really took it that way… perhaps because being raised Catholic, I was quite used to hear people talk about being Called to service in some capacity (ie, nuns and priests).  

, and/or the shift away from living/discussing magical lifestyles (in public, at least).

That could definitely be it.  At times the trend of not discussing anything magical in public really makes me wonder what we're even doing on lists together anymore.  If people want to stay so private, so hidden, why make the effort to connect with others like ourself at all?  They're certainly not leaving much public for newcomers to connect with.  If all of this had been so private, so hidden, so secretive back in 1999 when I first found the community, I really don't think I would have found enough to connect with to keep me here.

Then again, I'm sure some would say that's the point.

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Claude

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Tuesday, 27th July, 2010 - 8:32 am
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I'm not even sure I understand the concept of a calling in life. I've always seen things as a mixture of skill sets, opportunity and circumstance, and mood at the times of decision making. And, well, partly just what someone else decides, depending on political system and social hierarchy and all, which is again “opportunity and circumstance”. I was a solider because I was good enough at it and because my father was and because the political higher-ups decided they could use me; if I'd been bad at it I might have been a lower-ranking one anyway because of the other circumstances, and any other talents or leanings I had didn't matter much…and to me either really. The whole thing of being passionate about one occupation (be it professional or as more of a leisure activity) seems to me like a thing specific to this world that I find quite fascinating. Over here, there's all this freedom to choose things…theoretically. But in the end it still hangs on skill sets and money and what education one can afford and get into and all that, right? Spirit-/energy-healing maybe excluded. Our healers also turned healers because they had the skills and opportunity and someone thought they could use them in the position; I don't even know how they generally felt about it or if they thought much about whether this was their calling or if they'd rather been artists or blacksmiths maybe.

 

In a way I find this freedom and focus on vocations and doing something that's individually perfect for you strenuous and stressful. My headmate Joshua is even more like this; he says he got called to his religion, but that's it, and otherwise his intrinsic calling in this life is to be comfortable and enjoy his days as much as possible and not to let pesky stuff spoil it too much. XD I think we're about on the same wavelength there really.

 

…lol, careless egoistical humans, what can you expect? wink

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
Arlington, VA

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Thursday, 29th July, 2010 - 9:09 am
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*shrugs* I don't know that anyone can really explain Callings… some people just seem to have them.  It's not unusual, or even restricted to the otherkin community – Catholic priests and nuns routinely refer to being called by God to their work.

What perturbs me is that there used to be *tons* of people in the otherkin community who did feel they had been called to be Healers… used to be you couldn't turn around without tripping over at least three.  Now?  You'd almost think they were never there in the first place, they've disappeared so completely.

Actually, come to think of it, seen many “Guardians” lately either?  They used to be the other big Calling in the community.

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Arethinn
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Thursday, 29th July, 2010 - 3:07 pm
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I do run across people calling themselves Guardians now and again, but yeah, those numbers aren’t like they were either. The fivetrees list on Yahoo has an odd spurt of posts in September 2007 but other than that looks like it hasn’t been active since 2005, and like so many things related to otherkin (though fivetrees wasn’t strictly a kin list) the peak seems to have been between 1998-2002 or so.

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Jarandhel Dreamsinger
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Thursday, 29th July, 2010 - 4:46 pm
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Any other callings you can think of?  I can only think of one other reasonably big one: bards.  We don't see as many of them either.  Did all of the people with callings just walk out of the community one day, or stop referring to themselves as having a calling, or what?

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