Confessions of a Teenaged Angelkin [AMA]

I got asked to talk about my time identifying, and coming out of identifying as, an otherkin.

I hope the title makes the first topic obvious: I identified, for a time, as Angelkin. The specific question: Why angelkin? And why did I get out.

So getting in was a handful of ideas:

First, I was already IDing as tigerkin. I was part of the community, but I noticed things that didn't match the idea of tiger, so I was questioning that for a while.

Concurrently, I was learning witchcraft. I was a baby-fluffy-bunny at the time, and bought into weird things. I was a teen, it's acceptable. My mentor and I used to cast together me taking the feminine and positive roles of our spellwork, she taking the masculine and negative roles.

This, I think is important to part of it. I'm a huge duality nut, and you might notice the reversal, though some might say harmony, of the above split. (Many dualities bunch feminine and the various negative connotations into the same group. Thank you, pagan misogyny.)

After I split from my mentor, I joined another group, where I didn't play the feminine role as much, but I become the defender of the group, and the sole practitioner who used light and positive energy symbolism in my craft. That became my role in life: The glowing guardian.

After a while, I kind of slipped into that identity further and further until angel was more or less the only thing I saw in myself. It was a naive sort of experience with "angel", but it also became my nickname/title in the group previously mentioned. And to be honest, it helped while I was there.

I slipped out of that more or less with the rest of my escape from otherkin identity in general: I became more and more skeptical as people began pushing the definitions of what it meant to be *kin. I also learned more about totemic worship, spiritual guides/companions, and other various pagan ideals.

When I realized I could incorporate my kin-types into worship, and I became better for it? The idea of otherkin became pretty useless.

(I do not really deal with angels. I'm not even sure if I could tell you the difference between most spiritual servants of the deific concept and an angel in the first place.)

 

were you secure in your belief that you were literally an angel (if that is what you believed) or did you have to convince yourself that it was a real thing? this is what I wonder the most, I think, whether most people are certain or like.. consciously pushing themselves past worries constantly.

 

I don't think I was every REALLY secure in my belief? Not in the same way I was Mormon, for sure.

I don't think I was the "literal" type, "reincarnated"/"incarnated" maybe. The idea that I was other I was fairly secure in. (The reason for THAT has become pretty obvious, though.) Angel, didn't really take convincing more than a "that's an option?" sort of moment. It did help that I had friends reinforcing the idea more or less without question.

 

Ah, yeah. Issues. Some *kin are weird. (All *kin are weird.)

I remember that angelkin in the LJ days had their own hierarchy loosely based on the heavenly hosts. But when you meet your third "Michael" you kind of roll your eyes, even if you're part of the group.

 

I did not see that. Got links?

 

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd run into otherkin as a young teen. I used to obsessively play cat as a little kid, and I certainly felt pretty much perma-left-out and othered during my schooldays. As it happened, I peripherally ran into the concept of furries on Neopets, because a lot of people had 'fursonas', though I don't think many of them went beyond that. So I adopted one too; I remember thinking at the time that it might be hard to pick, and then settling on panther within about five seconds. It's stuck with me, too. /vaguely indicates avatar
There seems to be some overlap between furries and *kin (bearing in mind that I know very, very little about either community and this may be common knowledge) since I remember hearing of or coming across people who seemed to find their fursona more 'real' than their human identity, and my response to them was essentially... well, it veered between 'uh, okay' and burning jealousy because I didn't want to be a damn human, it wasn't any fun, but I couldn't get over the blatant impossibility of 'really' being a panther. I didn't have a concept of being 'spiritually' one, and I wonder if that might have swayed me.

 

12-year-old me would be dying to be some kind of "other" in that way to justify being a fucking weirdo, but I doubt I'd get into kin culture because thankfully I was also angrily skeptical. I remember my early teens as a time of permanently suppressed rage against the world, and having any beliefs to make it better seemed like the coward's way out.

In a way, I think I'd be much more susceptible to multiple culture, because I always had a thing for projecting my imagination to see myself as different people, and even creatures, in different moments of my life (for example, my favorite visualization for anxiety is to imagine anxious!me as a scared child separate from current!me who is wise and grown-up and can take care of them and love them - another favorite is to imagine I am my nazi spy trans guy OC on a difficult mission) and I could certainly see that spiraling out of control if it had been enabled.

In a strange way, 24-year old current day me would find it easier to ID as some level of kin, simply because my mind is a lot more open to the healing power of fantasy and I sometimes do picture myself as being a plant, an angel, a wolf etc. in my day to day life. But I always think of it in terms of identification/play. I can't really imagine what it's like to come to a point in which you actually think you're a literal wolf.

 

yes! I think this is like 80% of the reason I hated the otherkin community for a while and couldn't figure out why. HOW DARE YOU BE LIVING A SUBJECTIVELY COOLER LIFE WITHOUT DOUBT ISSUES

 

Welp. That was certainly a thing.

 

Oh man that sounds kinda excellent. (In potential-for-drama terms) Did anyone actually want to be the heavenly gofers, or was it a constant arms race to keep from being at the bottom?

 

Well, considering I identified closest with the "guardian angel" archetype, I was more or less the heavenly gofer, and was okay with it. But I think that's just my personality.

As I remember it was mostly a small group people going arms race through the seraphim and archangels, and a bunch of us going "we're just angels, if we were on of the big guys we'd have more messages from god."

 

Were there any Godkin? I've seen people kin as deities before but not the Abrahamic one.

 

God as in Yahweh kin?

I never met one.

I married someone who claimed to be the reincarnation of the Norn Skuld. I met a Frey. I knew Spider (As in the concept of Spider.)

I've met more than one person who thought they were generically deity.

I may be a blasphemous fuck, but even I have my limits.

 

Yes, I think that's way over presumptuous. And bad luck.

 

i think that abrahemic God would not...
like that.
at all

 

//literal irl cringing over thought of Abrahamic God kin
i feel so wrong even **typing** that, but i kind of want to go find someone who says they are one

 

i feel like that would take so much ego.