Date First Written: January 2009; Date Last Updated: November 2019
Finding The Therianthropy Community
Our story of how we discovered the therianthrope community and then other commentaries related to support for those who do not fully identify as human is a bit of a lengthy one due to the layers of discovery that took place. It began first with discovering at least one other person also considered themselves an animal, then discovering there were records of such people in books and documentaries, before finally stumbling into the online community itself.
Our first step toward discovering the existence of communities for people who also identifying as nonhuman started with discovering we were not alone in our experiences and identities. At the age of 10 in 1999 we met someone who identified as a fox. (A person who still identifies as a fox to this day.) We talked about our feelings of wanting to act out animal behaviors which we were having to teach ourselves to control. We also discussed feelings of limbs and such which were not there on our bodies as well. So on and so forth on whatever we experienced at that time in our lives. Our friendship gave our multiple system an early boost in confidence in our identity thought it did not put an end to our childhood doubt completely. We were amazed we weren't entirely alone in being the only people who felt as we did with being nonhuman, but we thought we and our friend might be the odds one out still.
Our first step toward discovering an actual community for people who identify as nonhuman started on August of 2003 when the documentary, Animal Imitators aired. We had managed to catch a preview about it about and so recorded the whole thing on VHS because the topic seemed oddly relatable to us. The documentary interviewed several people. Some were interested in body modification involving animal traits, some were interested in dressing up as animals, a few who actually identifies as animals (one of whom even directly called himself a “were”), and a few were a mix of two or more. ("Were" was another term for therian which was primarily used during the 90s and early 2000s before falling out of favor to “therian.”) One of those interviewed was Stalking Cat, a man who had had numerous body modifications done to look more like a tiger because he felt he was a cat. We sympathized with his identification as an animal through not so much for the desire to take surgical action. Another person’s interviewed who we couldn’t help but feel similar to was a man named Coyote Osborne. The narrator of the documentary, introduced Coyote by stating, “Not all […] feel a need to transform their bodies. Some just accept they are an animal trapped in a human skin.” Coyote Osborne talked about having past life memories and dreams about being a coyote as well as talking about how he felt he wasn’t human spiritually. The first time watching the documentary, we couldn’t help but identity and relate to Coyote in his experiences. We took comfort in the knowledge that we were not alone even more than what we had previously thought and there was even a term for such people as us.
Sometime in the summer of 2004 a full-hour documentary called Humanimals aired. We recorded it on VHS and so remember it's content and year. The documentary almost exclusively focused on people who had modified their bodies to look more animalistic. A few of them stated outright they didn’t identify as or even with the animal they were modifying their body to look like. However, a number of those individuals stated they did in some way or another identify with or as that animal. This documentary didn’t strike us as strongly as the other commentary, but still some things seemed familiar to us. It still added to our sense of not being alone in our feelings.
In the winter of 2004, the nudge referencing otherkin and similar communities occurred again when a school friend of ours in junior high and high school mentioned that there were people who were nonhuman spirituality. She had an interest in witchcraft as her father was practicing witchcraft, paganism, and/or the occult (we never fully learned exactly what it was he practiced). They had heard of people who were actually werebeasts, vampires, elves, and dragons. (We remember her specifically mentioned those four.) She didn’t call them by any term nor knew anything more than that really, sadly.
In the fall of 2005 while searching through the books at our local library, Cavern-Risen came across a book called, The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shapeshifting Beings by Bard Steiger. The book included several sections that interested us. One section was titled "Howls" and was about gatherings of werewolves and members of a group called alt.horror.werewolves. The section also referenced the 1994 Harvest Howl (the first howl ever which was organized through AHWw). Another section was called “Spiritual Shape-Shifting,” which discussed the topic spiritual practices where a person took on the power or some other quality of an animal. It also touched on the idea of people merely connecting with or identifying with/as a certain animal. The section also included a mediation exercise to spiritually shapeshift into a wolf. Finally, another section discovered was named, "Theriomorph" which mentioned people who called themselves "spiritual theriomorphs" and that they identify as/with an animal though the author linked this with a guide or totem. The book was notable enough that we made photocopies of the pages in question back then to help on hand. Again, we were left with a feeling of our experiences being a part of some phenomena others were also experiences plus we were left with a new word to think over as well. However we still had no idea where these people were meeting up and how to find this community.
Even after first hearing from a few like experienced people, we still struggled with the possibility of being insane. These tastes of information gave us the idea we were not alone, but left us with more questions than answers. We questioned ourselves even more than we already had been. Questioned our sanity and everything we felt about ourselves. Yet despite the doubt, we could not resist the conviction and inner knowing we felt that said we were non-physically nonhuman. So we were not alone in being animals in a human body but what exactly did that mean? This left us grasping at straws for answers. We had dreams of being animals, we felt animal bodies overlapping our physical body, sometimes we had out-of-body experiences, and more, but we needed more content to what was going on. We didn't know what words to use to explain and categorize our feelings either. Some of us used "werewolf" because of their human/wolf duality. Some of us used "transspecies" because it had been used in the 2004 documentary Animal Imitators. Some of us used "were" because it too had been used in the documentary but wasn't so formal sounding. At a loss and being confused young teens, we turned to werewolf lore for any possible explanations. It was terrifying to not know what was going on and not know what sources to trust or discard. During this brief period of time in our early teens we were what is called "fluffy" in the therianthrope community. We took note of our dreams and "phantoms" to see if they related to the Moon's cycle, we toyed with the idea that physical shifting might be possible. Ah, yes, physical shifting. We would be lying to say we never, on several occasions, went outside on nights of the full moon to try any number of prayers or occult rituals that could actually be followed which were supposed to cause physical transformation. We were confused and desperate for understanding in ourselves, and species dysphoria wasn't helping. We thankfully stumbled into more information before too long.
Then in March 2006, we finally discovered the online therian community. Cavern-Risen had been looking up information on any so called "real-life" examples or reports of werewolves after finally reading every book at our local library on anything related to werewolves and finally turned to the web. We ended up finding a webpage called The Therianthropy Resource. Much of the information there was apparently taken from Alt.Horror.Werewolves and/or Were.net with each section credited to the author. At first, Cavern-Risen honestly thought it was just another werewolf website; however, as she went down the page it became more and more apparent that wasn‘t the case. The webpage began describing something called “therianthropy” and how such people were, in a way, the real equivalent to werebeasts. Several sections went over some personal experiences from their authors and the final section was over kinds of shifts and walk-ins. As she read through the text she kept remembering our own experiences as well as remembering the documentaries we had seen, books we had read, and things we had heard. Hoping that we were on the trail of what we had heard about off and on for years, Cavern-Risen took a few of the terms used and took a search engine to them. From that search, the next website found was The Shadow Wulfs Den. The website talked about various kinds of experiences more in-depth. Looking back, we can tell that a number of the things in the website are what would be called fluffy due to the website mixing fact with fiction (mixing in myths of werewolves into how therians actually are) as well as making real world claims (such as physical shifting being real). However, the website did give us more insight and ideas to bounce off of with to find and learn more about this topic. From there we found many more websites and spent hours for weeks on end reading through what we could find. Some of the websites we came across included The WereWeb, The Werewolf and Shapeshifter Codex, The Werebeast Support Page, Werelist, Therianthropy.org, Unicorns United, The Draconity FAQ, Eristic.net, and others. Upon first coming upon the community, we were skeptical. We questioned if what was talked about really held any resemblance to our own state. We wondered if what we stumbled upon was earnest or mere roleplaying. (The heavy use of werewolf references still found here and there in the community in the early 2000s didn't help our skepticism.) However, we found honest introspection underneath the remnants of the werewolf fandom that the therianthrope community once rose from. We found terms like phantom shifting and mental shifting that gave structure and words to our years of experiences. The more we read through website after website over the days, weeks, and months, the more we felt a greater and greater sense of complete déjà vu. We kept doing research and became more and more convinced that we fit into the words we were reading about and that our experiences fit into these communities.
So by the summer of 2006 we began to lurk in the community. We continued to search for new websites about and related to the topic of identifying as nonhuman and continued to regularly check certain websites and forums. Over the months we found and read through dozens and dozens of websites. Some were personal websites, some forums, and some resources. The more we learned the more deeply we were convinced we finally had found a term for our state of being. We found ourselves mirrored in other therianthropes. We found people like ourselves. Our faith in ourselves renewed and we were able to better organize our own experiences and put them into perspective.
By early summer of 2007 we began to consider joining the community. Given Werelist was one of the visible forums we had been lurking and so had an idea of its atmosphere and content, we felt most comfortable joining it as our first step. However sometime during the fall of 2007, Werelist crashed causing us told back for a little bit longer.
On November 2007, Earth Listener joined several otherkin-related groups on Facebook as we had discovered there were several groups on there for otherkin, including ones specifically for therians. The first one we joined was Wild At Heart, which was the largest therian group we found at over 200 members. The second group was simply called Otherkin which had well over 300 members as well. From there, we began being active on those groups and not long joining other Facebook groups as well.
On March 2008, we joined Werelist for the first time after it came back online and we re-joined it again when the forum was revamped in September 2008. After that, we joined other forums such as The Awareness Forums in May 2008, among others. Thus, we’ve been around the otherkin communities in various places ever sense somewhere or another as a multiple system.
Our first step toward discovering the existence of communities for people who also identifying as nonhuman started with discovering we were not alone in our experiences and identities. At the age of 10 in 1999 we met someone who identified as a fox. (A person who still identifies as a fox to this day.) We talked about our feelings of wanting to act out animal behaviors which we were having to teach ourselves to control. We also discussed feelings of limbs and such which were not there on our bodies as well. So on and so forth on whatever we experienced at that time in our lives. Our friendship gave our multiple system an early boost in confidence in our identity thought it did not put an end to our childhood doubt completely. We were amazed we weren't entirely alone in being the only people who felt as we did with being nonhuman, but we thought we and our friend might be the odds one out still.
Our first step toward discovering an actual community for people who identify as nonhuman started on August of 2003 when the documentary, Animal Imitators aired. We had managed to catch a preview about it about and so recorded the whole thing on VHS because the topic seemed oddly relatable to us. The documentary interviewed several people. Some were interested in body modification involving animal traits, some were interested in dressing up as animals, a few who actually identifies as animals (one of whom even directly called himself a “were”), and a few were a mix of two or more. ("Were" was another term for therian which was primarily used during the 90s and early 2000s before falling out of favor to “therian.”) One of those interviewed was Stalking Cat, a man who had had numerous body modifications done to look more like a tiger because he felt he was a cat. We sympathized with his identification as an animal through not so much for the desire to take surgical action. Another person’s interviewed who we couldn’t help but feel similar to was a man named Coyote Osborne. The narrator of the documentary, introduced Coyote by stating, “Not all […] feel a need to transform their bodies. Some just accept they are an animal trapped in a human skin.” Coyote Osborne talked about having past life memories and dreams about being a coyote as well as talking about how he felt he wasn’t human spiritually. The first time watching the documentary, we couldn’t help but identity and relate to Coyote in his experiences. We took comfort in the knowledge that we were not alone even more than what we had previously thought and there was even a term for such people as us.
Sometime in the summer of 2004 a full-hour documentary called Humanimals aired. We recorded it on VHS and so remember it's content and year. The documentary almost exclusively focused on people who had modified their bodies to look more animalistic. A few of them stated outright they didn’t identify as or even with the animal they were modifying their body to look like. However, a number of those individuals stated they did in some way or another identify with or as that animal. This documentary didn’t strike us as strongly as the other commentary, but still some things seemed familiar to us. It still added to our sense of not being alone in our feelings.
In the winter of 2004, the nudge referencing otherkin and similar communities occurred again when a school friend of ours in junior high and high school mentioned that there were people who were nonhuman spirituality. She had an interest in witchcraft as her father was practicing witchcraft, paganism, and/or the occult (we never fully learned exactly what it was he practiced). They had heard of people who were actually werebeasts, vampires, elves, and dragons. (We remember her specifically mentioned those four.) She didn’t call them by any term nor knew anything more than that really, sadly.
In the fall of 2005 while searching through the books at our local library, Cavern-Risen came across a book called, The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shapeshifting Beings by Bard Steiger. The book included several sections that interested us. One section was titled "Howls" and was about gatherings of werewolves and members of a group called alt.horror.werewolves. The section also referenced the 1994 Harvest Howl (the first howl ever which was organized through AHWw). Another section was called “Spiritual Shape-Shifting,” which discussed the topic spiritual practices where a person took on the power or some other quality of an animal. It also touched on the idea of people merely connecting with or identifying with/as a certain animal. The section also included a mediation exercise to spiritually shapeshift into a wolf. Finally, another section discovered was named, "Theriomorph" which mentioned people who called themselves "spiritual theriomorphs" and that they identify as/with an animal though the author linked this with a guide or totem. The book was notable enough that we made photocopies of the pages in question back then to help on hand. Again, we were left with a feeling of our experiences being a part of some phenomena others were also experiences plus we were left with a new word to think over as well. However we still had no idea where these people were meeting up and how to find this community.
Even after first hearing from a few like experienced people, we still struggled with the possibility of being insane. These tastes of information gave us the idea we were not alone, but left us with more questions than answers. We questioned ourselves even more than we already had been. Questioned our sanity and everything we felt about ourselves. Yet despite the doubt, we could not resist the conviction and inner knowing we felt that said we were non-physically nonhuman. So we were not alone in being animals in a human body but what exactly did that mean? This left us grasping at straws for answers. We had dreams of being animals, we felt animal bodies overlapping our physical body, sometimes we had out-of-body experiences, and more, but we needed more content to what was going on. We didn't know what words to use to explain and categorize our feelings either. Some of us used "werewolf" because of their human/wolf duality. Some of us used "transspecies" because it had been used in the 2004 documentary Animal Imitators. Some of us used "were" because it too had been used in the documentary but wasn't so formal sounding. At a loss and being confused young teens, we turned to werewolf lore for any possible explanations. It was terrifying to not know what was going on and not know what sources to trust or discard. During this brief period of time in our early teens we were what is called "fluffy" in the therianthrope community. We took note of our dreams and "phantoms" to see if they related to the Moon's cycle, we toyed with the idea that physical shifting might be possible. Ah, yes, physical shifting. We would be lying to say we never, on several occasions, went outside on nights of the full moon to try any number of prayers or occult rituals that could actually be followed which were supposed to cause physical transformation. We were confused and desperate for understanding in ourselves, and species dysphoria wasn't helping. We thankfully stumbled into more information before too long.
Then in March 2006, we finally discovered the online therian community. Cavern-Risen had been looking up information on any so called "real-life" examples or reports of werewolves after finally reading every book at our local library on anything related to werewolves and finally turned to the web. We ended up finding a webpage called The Therianthropy Resource. Much of the information there was apparently taken from Alt.Horror.Werewolves and/or Were.net with each section credited to the author. At first, Cavern-Risen honestly thought it was just another werewolf website; however, as she went down the page it became more and more apparent that wasn‘t the case. The webpage began describing something called “therianthropy” and how such people were, in a way, the real equivalent to werebeasts. Several sections went over some personal experiences from their authors and the final section was over kinds of shifts and walk-ins. As she read through the text she kept remembering our own experiences as well as remembering the documentaries we had seen, books we had read, and things we had heard. Hoping that we were on the trail of what we had heard about off and on for years, Cavern-Risen took a few of the terms used and took a search engine to them. From that search, the next website found was The Shadow Wulfs Den. The website talked about various kinds of experiences more in-depth. Looking back, we can tell that a number of the things in the website are what would be called fluffy due to the website mixing fact with fiction (mixing in myths of werewolves into how therians actually are) as well as making real world claims (such as physical shifting being real). However, the website did give us more insight and ideas to bounce off of with to find and learn more about this topic. From there we found many more websites and spent hours for weeks on end reading through what we could find. Some of the websites we came across included The WereWeb, The Werewolf and Shapeshifter Codex, The Werebeast Support Page, Werelist, Therianthropy.org, Unicorns United, The Draconity FAQ, Eristic.net, and others. Upon first coming upon the community, we were skeptical. We questioned if what was talked about really held any resemblance to our own state. We wondered if what we stumbled upon was earnest or mere roleplaying. (The heavy use of werewolf references still found here and there in the community in the early 2000s didn't help our skepticism.) However, we found honest introspection underneath the remnants of the werewolf fandom that the therianthrope community once rose from. We found terms like phantom shifting and mental shifting that gave structure and words to our years of experiences. The more we read through website after website over the days, weeks, and months, the more we felt a greater and greater sense of complete déjà vu. We kept doing research and became more and more convinced that we fit into the words we were reading about and that our experiences fit into these communities.
So by the summer of 2006 we began to lurk in the community. We continued to search for new websites about and related to the topic of identifying as nonhuman and continued to regularly check certain websites and forums. Over the months we found and read through dozens and dozens of websites. Some were personal websites, some forums, and some resources. The more we learned the more deeply we were convinced we finally had found a term for our state of being. We found ourselves mirrored in other therianthropes. We found people like ourselves. Our faith in ourselves renewed and we were able to better organize our own experiences and put them into perspective.
By early summer of 2007 we began to consider joining the community. Given Werelist was one of the visible forums we had been lurking and so had an idea of its atmosphere and content, we felt most comfortable joining it as our first step. However sometime during the fall of 2007, Werelist crashed causing us told back for a little bit longer.
On November 2007, Earth Listener joined several otherkin-related groups on Facebook as we had discovered there were several groups on there for otherkin, including ones specifically for therians. The first one we joined was Wild At Heart, which was the largest therian group we found at over 200 members. The second group was simply called Otherkin which had well over 300 members as well. From there, we began being active on those groups and not long joining other Facebook groups as well.
On March 2008, we joined Werelist for the first time after it came back online and we re-joined it again when the forum was revamped in September 2008. After that, we joined other forums such as The Awareness Forums in May 2008, among others. Thus, we’ve been around the otherkin communities in various places ever sense somewhere or another as a multiple system.