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A long while back I found that someone had decided to link an article on a semi-popular site to my dragon page. The article mainly dealt with the theory that dragons are so often depicted in so many cultures because of some genetic memory of dinosaurs. Well... It's a good way to increase traffic to Draconic, but lots of miscellaneous traffic isn't what I want. I want to touch people like myself. To help them if I can. The miscellaneous web surfer who visits my site may be impressed with the graphics or the design. But that's all they really see - which is fine, for them. But what if you see more? What if you feel something you can't explain - an attraction - a fascination - a love for something inhuman, yet more familiar to you then any human you've met?
Are you a dragon?
I am. That's why I've created this site. I'm 29 as I revise this page once more, and Draconic has been around for about 7 years. I started this community back when there weren't any others. Alt.fan.dragons newsgroup was for roleplaying, Herpetophile mailing list was for scaled erotica, and that was about all there was that I ever found (and this was after searching relentlessly to compile a list of dragon-related web sites that was as complete as I could make it). Most of Draconic's software was created from scratch, before ASP and PHP were even invented. Seven years later, these communities are much easier to make, with pre-built software, and so they come and go. Some are now more advanced than Draconic, and admittedly I haven't had time to keep up with all of their fancy features. Instead, my goal has always been to help those like myself. To understand that you're not alone. I now know dragons in their 60s, and surely there are older ones than that. I think that dragon spirits have always been here, but it has only been since the age of the internet that we could easily find one-another.
Around 1994, I found that I wasn't alone, and I was overjoyed. It's not that I hadn't expected that somewhere in this world of billions of people there was at least one other person at least somewhat similar to me; but to actually find that person, many of them in fact, was a turning point in my life. I've seen it have the same effect on other dragons and on displaced spirits of all kinds. We are sometimes referred to as Otherkin - spirits of any inhuman creature "trapped" in a human body. From spirits of animals like wolves and foxes, to unicorns, fairies, and elves - they're all out there. In fact, as of 2005, over ten-thousand people have registered with Draconic. Of course, some are duplicates, and not all are Otherkin, but it's still a large number, and just one of the many places you now might find us on the net.
With all of this meeting and mingling, I think more people are coming into the Otherkin community as role players rather than truly displaced spirits. Ask yourself if you feel some "ulterior motive" to calling yourself a dragon, or anything else. Perhaps you long to fit in somewhere, to find a brotherhood of any sort, or maybe you simply like the idea of being a dragon, being powerful enough to squash your foes, being able to fly away from your problems, or whatever else you associate with being a dragon (everyone thinks of them differently). Whatever the ulterior motive, I'm sorry to say that this is not the place for you, at least not if you plan to try to pass yourself off as a dragon. Personally, I did not choose to be a dragon, or want to experience all the pain that went with it. I did not want to be completely alone and feel out of place, or be in a funk longing to have wings for weeks on end. There was no advantage in it for me, or any group I could turn to for help. It simply happened, and I dealt with it on my own. At least I am pleased to say, for those of you who are feeling the same pain, that the feelings do pass, and I am now happy enough in this life, even if I would still jump at the chance to be a physical dragon.
Let me talk a bit about what happened during that period in my life. At age 10 or so I saw a dragon on a boxed set of Dungeons & Dragons (the role playing game). I got a hold of it and started playing the game and finding myself most interested in encounters with dragons. I didn't want to kill them, but capture one, despite that being one of the hardest things to do in the game. My interest in the game didn't last that long, but my interest in the pictures on the boxes did. I began to collect dragon pictures as a sort of hobby. But it wasn't just a hobby, I found the dragons to be beautiful. It was hard for me to accept, but I eventually had to admit I wanted to be one of those gorgeous creatures. Still, I mostly ignored those thoughts and kept collecting pictures. I went so far as to buy a book, Dragonsbane, just because it had a dragon picture on it. I never intended to read it.
But I did read it. It was on a long boring camping trip with my parents. The book happened to be about a female mage who was also attracted to dragons, who actually wanted to be one! This was amazing to me. Perhaps my desires weren't so strange after all. My life had changed. I found I could no longer deny what I wanted. I cried because I felt so hopelessly trapped in human form.
How on earth could I ever become a dragon? This question consumed me for a time as I tried to come up with ways it might be possible. Magic and prayer (the "quick fix" solutions) did not work. In the end I decided my best chance was through genetic engineering, but as a 10-year-old (or was I 12?) there wasn't much I could do to get started on such a project. I had to wait. And while I waited I asked the question: "Why do I want so much to be a dragon?" I had this burning desire, something so intense it could make me depressed for weeks on end, so there must be some reason behind it, right? Some scientific, logical, reasonable reason... In my junior year of high school I got so desperate to understand it and to make my friends understand it that I wrote a story - the story of what I wanted, and why I thought I wanted it. You can read it if you'd like. It's quite long and most people tell me they love it, although I think its intensity may upset those who also long to be dragons. I revised the story 12 times over the course of two years, trying to use it as a tool to analyze my feelings, so I could explain them to myself and to others. Writing it was very painful, so it has been a long time since I have wanted to take on another story.
The problem was, the story really didn't ring true to me. The main idea was that I wanted to be a dragon because a dragon was my idea of the perfect creature, but why would wanting to have a "perfect" body be such a passion? Why would not having a dragon form cause me such pain, as if it was something I needed to be happy and complete? Moreover, why would I think a dragon body was perfect? After all, bird wings generate more lift. Horns, long necks, and round tails aren't the ideal forms for aerodynamics or steering. And why should flight be so important, compared to swimming, space travel, or even ground travel? Why not be a shape-shifter, able to change to whatever form was best suited to the environment I cared to explore? I skirted around such questions in my story, but deep down I knew I couldn't answer them. Dragons may excel beyond humans in most physical aspects, but they certainly can't be called "perfect". In fact, most humans seem to find them terrifying or ugly, quite the opposite of how I see them. My feelings still didn't make sense, even after two years of contemplation and analysis.
So it was that I came to have Internet access in college. One of the first people who touched me was a velociraptor. I posted my dragon story to a small mailing list of dragon/reptile fans and her response was by far the longest and most interesting. She seemed to understand. I eagerly talked to her. She told me of how she felt she might have been a raptor in a past life. What? A past life? That's ridiculous. I was a man of science. And yet I'd been raised a Christian and had believed in god for a long time. Why did I turn to science? I had seen no evidence of god. I'd never seen a miracle. I knew about plenty of very bad things happening around the world. Even if there was a god, he didn't seem to be doing anything of tangible benefit to anyone, so I turned to science. Still, I wasn't a man of science as much as I was a creature with an open mind, forming my belief system based on whatever evidence I had encountered, and willing to change the system if new evidence came my way. This raptor told me of experiences I couldn't explain with science. She had written long detailed stories of another of her past lives as a member of a strange alien race, a race focused on war and planetary conquest. She remembered this life more clearly than all the others. She told me of her spirit guide, how she'd talked to him for years and one night seen him as a ball of light. Could this be proof of something unexplainable - beyond science? Or was she just delusional, or very imaginative? I couldn't say. Yet I saw no reason for her to make up her past-life memories. Most of them were painful and haunted her. They gave her all sorts of phobias in this life which made no sense based on her experiences in this life. I also met others who believed as she did. I met someone who I thought was role-playing a dragon. One night he told me he believed he was a dragon in body once, long ago. He was always depressed about it, wishing to return to that form and wishing to be reunited with his mate who'd been killed soon after their mating ceremony. Was this some strange psychological condition? Was it a need to find something to always be depressed about? Maybe he just randomly chose to be depressed about wanting to be a dragon again? None of the alternative explanations make nearly as much sense as simply accepting that yes, he was once a dragon. Could the reason behind my feelings be the same? Was I once a dragon?
It took a long time for me to believe. I had two separate people tell me that they felt I was a dragon, and their feelings on exactly who I was matched. I heard story after story I couldn't explain. I even had a few experiences of my own that went beyond my normal perception of reality. I felt I could finally answer my question, "Why do I want so much to be a dragon?" The answer is that I miss it. I miss flying. I miss my home world. I miss being strong, and golden, and beautiful. Understanding that somehow helped to ease my pain, and I have been getting better ever since.
Starting in high school, I read a series of books that laid out what might be defined as a "new age" belief system. A Joseph Campbell Companion, by Joseph Campbell, is something of an investigation of how all religions are saying the same thing. The Celestine Prophecy, by James Redfield, talks about nine insights into our condition here on planet Earth. The first few insights deal with meaningful coincidences, and the notion that things happen for a reason, even apparently bad things. As much as I enjoyed this book at the time, I think that a recent movie called What the Bleep Do We Know!? does a better job at providing evidence of these kinds of claims rather than just telling a story. For instance, did you know that just by placing various words nearby or sending a positive or negative feeling towards water as it freezes will create dramatically different frozen ice crystal structures? This comes from the experiments of a scientist named Dr Masuro Emoto. In The Power of Intention, by Dr. Wayne W. Dyre, he goes extensively into this concept of what we think and feel having some real tangible effect on things around us. As he says, "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." As I live through 2005 and explore these concepts, I think my life really is changing for the better. On one of his TV specials, Wayne actually said to feel free to distribute a 6-CD recording of one of his one-week seminars, and so I have converted the CDs into an mp3 for anyone who cares to listen. It may change your life as it has mine, if you are open to it. Please excuse the poor sound quality, as I wanted to make the files as small as possible (32mb).
The idea that we're all here for a purpose and everything is going to turn out alright on some level probably sounds like wishful thinking to many. When I lost my faith in god I also lost the belief that there was any reason to life. I figured our existence was completely biological, and that when I died, my consciousness would cease to exist. I could accept that. I felt that I was being quite realistic in accepting that "fact", when so many others seemed to be clinging to any belief system they could find, as long as it leant some meaning to their lives. Searching for the truth, rather then finding a false but comforting answer, has always been very important to me. Yet the more experiences I have, the more I carefully look at life, the more I think there is a meaning. Usually, even when an event seems to be negative, the ultimate outcome or something that it teaches me outweighs the negativity of the event. Many times I seem to be mysteriously presented with the same sort of problem over and over until I find a positive way to deal with it, and then that sort of problem never manifests itself again. I've "learned my lesson", apparently. Was there a reason I was born in the month of the snake, the year of the dragon, and the hour of the dragon (according to Chinese astrology)? I happen to think I chose that birth date to give myself a clue about my past. It's a fragment of "hard evidence" that appeals to my logical nature.
I said earlier that I gave up Christianity and do not believe in god, and over the years I have received a handful of e-mails trying to "bring me back into the fold". I doubt I'll ever call myself Christian again, but I do believe in god, after a fashion. I think we all choose our lives, and that there is some mysterious system of meaningful coincidences that guide us towards things we choose to learn or accomplish, as long as we're open to the signs. One could say that this whole system is controlled by god, or by a Source, or even by some collection of friendly and malevolent spirits. In my mind, the important parts of all the major religions throughout history have all been about the same kinds of things (see that Joseph Campbell Companion I mentioned). By connecting to god, or Source, our higher selves, friendly spirits, our ancestors, or whatever it is, we can let that power guide, help, and protect us in this life. As long as I follow a path of good and fulfill my purpose here, someday I'll be a dragon again, even if it's in another life.
Here are some other resources you might be interested in:
- Baxil
Another dragon with a long and interesting life story.
- Otherkin.net
A large and venerable resource for displaced spirits of all types, dragon or otherwise.
- Draconity.org
Forums, a wiki, and links to more dragon communities.
- Finding your Answers Within, by Dick Sutphen.
Outlines techniques for self-hypnosis, past life regression, astral travel, etc. If you want to remember your life as a dragon, this is one possible method. Personally, my attempts at regression left me depressed and unsure what vague memory impressions were real, so I gave up.
If you're an average web surfer who's happened to find this page, perhaps my thoughts are one of the strangest things you've ever read. My hope is that they help you to understand that there are many ways of looking at life, many spirits, many things we all like to keep secret in the interest of blending in and appearing "normal". However, the concept of "normal" is arbitrary. Cultures all evolve over time, and at each period in their history they will have radically different ideas of what "normal" is. Broaden your perspective. Whether your spirit is dragon, human, or something else, it always behooves you to look beyond the arbitrary rules and expectations of your culture. Find your own truth, and fly free.
- KaniS, 2005
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