The 'Big Bang' theory states that our universe began when a 'something' infinitesimally small, infinitely hot and infinitely dense appeared untracably from 'somewhere'.
Where it came from science cannot explain. Why did it appear? Science cannot explain that either.

After it's initial appearance it inflated, expanded and cooled.
There was no explosion despite the name 'Big Bang', there was only a gradual expansion, which continues to this day.
Stephen Hawking was one of the first humans to turn his way of thinking to Einstein's theory of relativity, and according to his calculations before the 'something' appeared there was nothing at all anywhere.
The 'something' did not appear 'in space', rather all of space began inside this unnamed 'something', and prior to the 'something', nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing.

From everything I remember, and everything I've discovered and learned I believe The Source was that 'something'.
They contained within them the perfect balance and created everything in perfect balance also. For every Yin a Yang, for every up a down, etc.
The Source expanded and within itself formed 'The Shadow'.
As The Source continued to expand, The Shadow slowly dispersed into various different densities and depths of shade, these different shades of Shadow formed the different kin types, the first few formed helping the later ones through.
The planets were formed for us to play on, each one distinctly different to the next. Each with different climates, air qualities, gravities etc.
Creatures were formed on each of the 14 planets, but only actually took sentient form on three of them.
We kin formed as energy and were satisfied with that for many eons, but eventually tired of this state and sought a way to take three dimentional form. Trying each of the sentients in turn, the ones on Earth proved to be the most compatible, needing only minimal alteration in order to be suitable.
These beings were modified to make them more mobile, more voluble, to enable them to aquire knowledge and learn from each experience and observation, to enable them to reproduce to ensure a reliable supply of bodies, workers and pastoral guardians.
Some types of kin also visited the bodies of various animals, enjoying the extra freedoms and ranges of motion, speed and agility these bodies afforded them.

As for the ancient civilisations, Darkness is correct, we were them, and for a brief moment in time they were the best example of us in human form.
We existed, we created, we experimented, we invented. We were responsible for technological, and environmental advances that 'ordinary' humans were incapable of even understanding let alone explaining or reproducing.
Unfortunately the unrelenting advance of the tide of humans across the planet brought an end to our freedom and enjoyment, we were forced 'underground' in order to survive, as the humans continued to adapt and flourish, gaining in numbers almost as fast as they gained in intelligence and destructive accomplishments.
The majority abandoned their guardianship to become the users, the abusers, the takers who never intend to repay what they are given.
Of the few who are not, many of them were forced underground with us, as to be our friend is to be their enemy. And there is no doubt as to what that means.

These days we exist as small groups of kin, or as single entities all over the planet, trapped and bound by skin, just to survive.
Hated by the majority of humans, and considered demons, devils, and monsters. Even the ones who do not believe we are real hate the idea of us.
We rely on the internet to provide us with the contact of others like ourselves, and the communities we form online are as strong as any we would build in person. Though of course the urge to meet others like ourselves face to face is still strong, the WWW is the next best thing.
Forums like this are springing up all over the internet, not all of them are run by kin, and not all of them have a kin membership base. Some are for pretending to be kin, some are for role playing fantasy about kin, some are merely kin fan-sites, for people who enjoy reading about us or watching movies with kin based heroes and villains in them.
But for every role play forum, and every lie that is told, for every misconception re-inforced and every myth told as truth, someone, somewhere helps a real kin to a true awakening and better understanding of themselves.
This is what makes it all worth it.
Not the arguing amongst ourselves about who came first, who are the elders and do the real Vampires spell it with an 'i' or a 'y'?
Reaching out to someone who, if not for us, would have to go through the whole confusing, and often frightening ordeal of awakening alone, without help or guidance. Believeing themselves to be outcasts at best, and, at worst, completely insane. That is what counts now.
I do not care if anyone wants to believe what I have written about the origins of kin, this is what I know to be the truth, others have their own idea of truth, it has always been that way. But it is no longer important. It is not about where we came from, but where we are going that is now the most important thing.
Forward is the only direction, to a future freedom the like of which we have not known for millennia.
The time is coming.
Even the trees know it.

Wraith.

Whether or not I believe everything in that. I thought it was put together and written well. Good job Wraith.

~Legitimize

I agree with some of that Wraith, it explains quite a lot of things like the sudden advancement of the human race from a raw flesh tearing thug to a sophistaicated hunter who cooks his food before he eats it all in the blink of an eye. In universal terms such evolution should have taken far longer.

But I cannot agree with you that all of us leapt into human bodies first. I am Elfkin of a kind, and many of my race are humanoid in natural form, but I am not, when I revert my natural form is Black Panther, (I prefer to call them Cougars since I am originally from Canada, but it is all the same. Even the naturalists have a huge list of different names for the same dark pigmented creature, Jaguar, Panther, Cougar. Elvish has only one word for them all, referring to them as 'Morambath'. Which translates are 'large cat raised in darkness', or, big black cat. lol)
I know that the very first solid body I leapt into was a cat, a huge great black one. And all I did was climb trees and run. I ran everywhere, all the time. And I loved it.
I still hate being in human form as they just don't have the legs for running. lol
And whenever I can I still will re-incarnate as a cat, even sometimes a domestic moggy. Just for the fun of it.
Though of course these days with the shrinking of natural habitat and the hunting of the last big cats, and the violence/neglect towards domestic felines, being a kitty is no where near as much fun as it used to be.
Often I don't bother to re-incarnate at all, I hang around in the 'between' with others of my kind helping when I am necessary and just 'being' until I decide to hop back on the Merry-Go-Round for another go and re-incarnate again.

And I agree with Legitimize, that your post was very well written.

Darkness.

*sigh* What it must be like to remember such things. You're so lucky lol.

~Legitimize

What does this bit mean?
Does it mean that there are elders in each of the races, and that the rest of us are just the ones that tag along for the ride and do as we're told?

I'm not sure what this is supposed to tell me?

Well even if everything was formed all at once there are always going to be those who are finished first and those who remain unfinished until later. Like twins, triplets, etc.
One is born first, but it doesn't make them any less twins/triplets who were born at the same time, but one will always have to be a few seconds or minutes older than the next and so on because it is impossible for them both/all to be born at exactly the same moment.
I think that's all it means.

If there are elders they could only be milliseconds older than the rest. I think if there are such things as elders they would be the ones who from the very beginning went out of their way to help their fellow kin. They will have put themselves out there just to be of help in whatever way possible, and the titles will have come later because of all their hard work and dedication.
Lets face it no-one gets respect unless they deserve it, or they scare people into it. And if there are still elders today we are all so wide spread that it can no longer be a fear thing and so has to be a mark of respect.

Well, there are perhaps some who might be brainwashed while they were young into fearing someone and believing them to be in a position of power, but it wouldn't be anything big. Just one or two people. So yeah, undeserved respect isn't very good respect at all.

~Legitimize

no really there is no tagging along it's just the the first ones were born with a particuarly high dose of wanting to help other people so while the others were forming the first ones helped them to know what was happening, sort of pointing out the fire escapes and exit signs.
The first ones are still doing that kind of thing today.
Everyone has there talents, uses them in different ways and is appreciated for it, it is just that the strong drive to help others is common to all the first ones, and even that gets used in different ways.

Zygo

I remember the time when such a story would have been greeted with howls of laughter or at least with outright disbelief.
It would seem that at least some kin have come further than I had thought.

Your story missed two important instances Wraith.

As The Source expanded it was the energy from the expansion which fuelled the changes in the diverse shades of Shadow, and caused the creation of the different races of Kin.

And the fact that negative energy was given off as a naturally occuring substance by the forming of the Kin races, but was not recycled by The Source. Some of it formed black holes and dark stars, but some of it gathered together to form a kin of it's own. Your people dear.

For which The Source had to do some nifty footwork and create an opposing force of Kin. The Pheonix.

I loved your post Wraith.
eru pasatu lemnu.

Shade.

What's that?

That's not Elvin is it? What language is that?

I googled it and it doesn't exist.

I am studying the COROT (COnvection, ROtation & planetary Transits) information at the moment. The data from this space telescope allows us to probe the inner structure of stars and has already discovered an new oddity. The same size as Jupiter but 20 times more massive, it is described as an exotic of such an extreme nature that Astrologists cannot decide whether to call it a planet. There is a lot of other data that would only be of interest to a scientist, but hidden in amongst it there were a few fascinating facts that I believe relevant to this thread and others.

The first of which being that Dr Francois Bouchy, from the IAP astrophysics institute in Paris believes the new discovery might just be "a member of a new-found family of very massive planets that encircle stars even more massive than our Sun".
Where there are such stars there may be another earth-type planet waiting to be discovered. Perhaps another set of sentient forms waits there too?

This same telescope is outfitted to take measurements through a technique similar to seismology, and has discovered global oscillations of the Sun. Through the study of the phenomena of the sound waves travelling throughout the Sun, carrying information about what is happening below the surface, new insights can be gained about the Sun's internal structure.
These oscillations can be detected through the variation in the light emitted by the star as the surface vibrates. The way energy is transported from the core to the surface reveals the internal structure of the star.
By analysing the data contained within these vibrations, maps of the interior of the sun can be drawn. Something that has been thought impossible until now.

I recount this because it correlates directly to the Vibrational Theory of all that is. Which is I believe, one of the core beliefs of many members of this forum.

I am sure I heard about this somewhere, doesn't it use some new kind of filtration sequence to measure the vibrations?

My uncle loves this stuff. He was really excited by the news about the new brown 'star'.
I swear he lives in nerd central, in fact I think his house is the nucleus for all things nerd.

I wouldn't have thought about what it means to us, and thinking about the possibility of finding another inhabited planet I can understand why he was so excited. So thanks for that.

Technically until it is officially decided whether or not this new anomoly can be called a planet it is being classed as a 'brown dwarf'.

The new system is based on anisotropics. Which measures differences in the physical properties of substances along various axes.
Think of it as a mesh cone through which tea is passed. At the outer axis of measurement the holes are large and the larger tea leaves are filtered out, as you move into the centre of the cone the holes become gradually smaller and filter out smaller and smaller leaves. This not only ensures the best and most efficient filtration method with the most comprehensive data recorded, but also a steady, unimpeded flow of liquid through the cone, making the analysis faster as well as more efficient.
In measuring the ocillations in this way the density and make up of the core of stars like our sun can be calculated in greater detail, and periods of rotation can be computed.
The practical uses for this are vast.

Your Uncle should be encouraged in his interests. Nerds are the hope for the future.

I have some memories which correlate with this research.
During these memories I found myself to be flying past a number of stars and being very much aware of their presence as well as being actively fed by them.

But on to science based, rather than esoteric thinking...well mostly .

With the right equipment it is possible to measure the oscillation or vibration of any given object. These objects range from the planet we sit on to the Moon, from viruses to Blue wales and from algae to Trees. Imagine if, as Douglas Adams did, you could play all those different vibrations as music...... Now that would be something.

Now people have invented a brilliant new form of measurement for our life giving energy wells (otherwise known as suns or Stars). As we all know every known planet is completely reliant on it's Sun to provide it with energy, without the Sun there would be no physical life on Earth.
Is it such a stretch to think that Stars are sentient in some way..they are after all made from the same stuff we are ..or rather we are made of the same stuff they are.
Everything that makes you and therefore them has been here in one form or another since the universe started.
These oscillations wave forms and other vibrations would to my mind go some way towards saying that they are.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0205/22closest/

these brown star binary systems could be very important to the universe, because as the system collapses it would contract and rather than going Nova as many single stars do, the parts of the binary star that are solidifying would collide and fragment forcing a great many rare elements out into space.
These new elements would usually be destroyed by the supernova or locked into the solid iron ball formed by a red dwarf after the loss of nuclear fusion in the majority of dying stars.
I wonder if man will ever find a way to utilise such resources.

I had a thought....if in these cases the Star IS female why wouldn't these large planetoids be male. especially if when they collide and combine they produce something new.

what i would like to know is if COROT-exo-3b the newest "brown dwarf" is more than twice as dense as lead whats it made of?
It must be something pretty wild considering uranium is only about 50% denser than lead.

These are just a few ideas I had while reading through the articles about COROT. I think I might have something more to add but I am still formulating thoughts on that one

Zygo

Faith your Uncle is seriously cute.
You know I go for guys with glasses and a serious expression, especially when they are teamed with brains, a drop dead gorgeous smile and a decent six pack.
(He's only 38, he has a good job, a house, a car, and he's a really interesting person.)
Just because he gazes at stars for hours on end doesn't make him a boring geek!
NO it doesn't Faith.