Bats. Totally and completely.

I'm a tiger actually :P

I don't believe Shadow to be either good or evil. We are what we must be.
Though capable of being both I would rather say we are brutally honest, and uncompromisingly truthful.
Never popular, and not well liked, we are necessary, and that's us really.

This has been a most enjoyable read.. So I thought I would chime in with my two cents.. First.. To the original post. Since I have very little to do with Shadowkin I cannot say either way which side of the illusory fence Nocturn depicts, not because I am riding any fences, but because I have not the information to make an educated opinion.

As for the Shadow creating everything.. Well it isn't my personal belief but it isn't any more or less valid than any other. Divinity encompasses far more than we, even as Kin have ability to fathom entirely. It is only our need to label things that force us to attach monikers to its myriad of facets. There is a word for tree in every language on Earth, but it does not make it any less a tree. The truth of the matter is none of us really knows. It is whatever we call it simply that.. what we call it.. The simple truth is if it brings you the individual comfort to believe that there is some God/Goddess/Shadow/Jehovah/Allah/Olley Olley Oxenfree then that is the important part.

Grace to you and Peace.
Ezaraudin

I believe that the Shadow working within the Source are the creators of Kin. Which is no more or less believable than say the theory that Ishtahar mated with Shemyaza and gave birth to all Kin. Or that Kin are the Nephilim, the children of the Grigori and the human women they mated with. Or that Otherkin were all born to a Serpent Goddess named Tiamat and her equals in the Babylonian Myth of Creation. Or that we all came down from the heavens and are all desperately trying through each and every incarnation to find their way back to the stars.
I know many more Kin creation Myths but I'm sure you get the idea!
I have no notion of how these beliefs or any of the others came to be, but even though I do not share them, I do not ridicule them. They are just as real to their believers as mine is to me. And even if I cannot share the beliefs, then I can at least respect the faith it takes to believe them and the right of the believer to hold them.

I have been there myself Shade .
I am trying to moderate my posts a little bit though so if you see a change, it is my attempt to calm my points down a bit.

I know it's not really relevant here but I have always wondered how Ishtahar could be the mother of all Kin, if some of us remember the time before humans (Ishtahar being human). And heres a thought if she was the mother of all kin what was Shemyaza?. Doesn't make sense to me that one.

Did it work?

I am with Darkness on this one with the exceptions of the Wraith and Phoenix who I am sure came to be in rather different ways

Zygo

Evereyone has a creation myth.. There are days when I think the this place is just the discarded toy from The Source's Happy Meal.

But all jokes aside it raises the interesting point about the whole pre-human Kin. I'm going to need an explaination of that one also.

Grace to you and Peace,

Ezaraudin

Well you always sound reasonable to me my friend so I couldn't comment on your efforts to make your posts sound more reasonable.
However the rest of your post is very interesting to me.

I have heard of the Myth involving Ishtahar obviously, and can understand where your difficulty comes from. However things may be helped if you understand that the people who claim this for their belief do not think of angels as any kind of Otherkin. They believe them to be God's light workers, messengers, aides, and servants. Created to do Gods will, without free will of their own.
First came God, then came the angels, then humans, then the Nephilim or Otherkin from the mating of these humans and the section of angel heirarchy who were known as the Grigori. Ishtahar was one of the humans (allegedly the one with the most magickal knowledge) who mated with these angels and they believe that she gave birth to the Nephilim who became Otherkin.

Of course those of us who have memories of the before time know that Otherkin came before humans, and so could not have been the result of a mating between humans and anyone, but they believe it, and so it comes down to a matter of Faith and freedom of choice.
Their Faith is telling them something our memories make us unable to believe. The freedom of choice comes into it when we gather with others who think the same way we do, and leave them to do the same.
Neither belief hurts the other unless and until people start screaming proof or persecution.
As long as we don't do that we can all live happily until doomsday.
Thankfully the internet is a huge place with more than enough room for us all to dwell without butting heads, Faiths or beliefs.
Jardinn.

Bravo. There are those that frequent here who would do well to heed that simple lesson.

My only experience with the Nephilim comes from the Book of Genesis. "And the angels of The Lord looked upon the daughters of men and found them fair and took from them wives of their choosing, and of them were the Nephilim, and they were mighty men in those days and men of reknown." Which is the extent of the Bibles content. I had always thought this passage enigmatic.

Grace to you and Peace,
Ezaraudin

As always your post is a pleasure to read Jardinn.

Ishtahar's claims are not unknown to me either, but I cannot subscribe to them, as of course I have my own version of the creation story, as I'm sure we all do with one or two variations thrown in just to make things interesting.

I too am one of those with access to memories of a time before the life I am living now, and memories of the between times aswell. I recall time spent with others of my kind in a place where everything is real, but nothing is physical. I know some of the stories and songs of my people, told so the times before will never be forgotten.
I do not have the memories of the time before human beings were created, but I know that many people do, yourself included I believe?
I apologise if I'm wrong about that.

Darkness.

I must admit apart from the memories of the dreamtime I remember the events of the fall the ones now known as Ishtahar, Azazel and Shemyasa were involved in.
The fall prior to that is for me the important one because it set the rules that the "Grigori" flouted and willfully broke putting all kinds in danger by introducing non kin to such dangerous pursuits as warfare in the second fall.
I have been able to prove memories of later events from times when written records were kept and not being a creative sort of person (I can't make up stories at all), I have no reason to doubt my early memories especially when they coincide with other peoples, so while I am happy to let others believe whatever they like I am also honour bound by my principles to speak the truth as I see it here too.

Zygo

Which ones now known as Ishtahar, Azazel and Shemyaza?
You've got dozens and dozens of each of those people to choose from, all of them claiming to be the original and the one and only!
The choice is really quite dizzying.

I too have the memories, though not all the ones I know I have are actually available to me yet. I am still working on retrieving the missing ones.

Zygo your posts are just fine, and your tone is usually spot on.
You should trust your judgement, but then that could be said of so many here today. They are getting spooked by things that are not important enough to worry about. If you want to change for yourself then you should, but if this is in response to outside influences then it would be a mistake.
Let's get back to being us should we? I've really missed that.

Shade.

Sounds good to me Shade.

see you there

Zygo

to the original question: i cannot truly say what i believe the shadows to be. I have friends who take the shapes of shadows, but i have never been so bold as to ask them if they are the shadows. they watch over me from time to time, so if i were to think they were the shadows then i would say that at least some are good. i have a hard time labeling an entire group as either one or the other though. So i would have to say that i believe shadow is balance. They are either/or and sometimes both.
the reason i believe this is because i believe the source is made up of the three. I havent decided if i believe together they are labeled the source, or if the source is a being made up of light, absence of light and shadow. I do believe these three can exist as one because light and the absence of light cancel each other out, meaning they no longer are either, they are nothing. Shadow is necessary to keep both without destroying either. so it's light, absence of light and shadow, chaos, order and balance.
i believe that shadow took part in creation as it takes part in destruction just as the light and the absence of do. i do not know if shadowkin are the same shadow or decendents of. i don't know much about shadowkin since i have had few encounters with and even less time in conversation with them (that and the shadowkin are intimidating especially since when i was younger i was usually afraid, not of the dark, but the shadows that waited within. never knew who exactly was looking at you through the shadows.)

I loved this post Katie. It puts into words some of the beliefs I have and the difficulty I have completely understanding them and explaining what it is I believe.
I know that I do believe, but when I try to tell anyone else it gets so complicated.
So I'd like to thank you for this post, because it helps me a lot to see some of what I believe written down like this, and to know that I am not the only one who feels this way.