I checked out the links that Dragonslorefury left in the Study for Lupa's books.
There are a couple of things I don't understand though.

Firstly there is a part where she says:

What does she mean by external source? I mean I think I understand that:

means that their animal essence is re-born over and over into a human body. Yes I think that's what that means, but what external source could give someone the ability to shapeshift?

Also she says something about

But born as opposed to what?

These are the first of my questions on this subject, I hope no-one minds.
Thanks very much to any of you who can give me any help.
Kes.

I think what she's getting at is that most shapeshifters use a totem animal to incite a shift in a shamanic manner, not an internal one meaning one's therioside.

Yup, she's separating therians/weres from general shamanic shape shifters. Therians/weres usually shift to their internal therioside (though many also use totems to incite a shift into a different, or same, animal), whereas purely shamanic shifters use an external totem.

Born meaning a therian/were vs. learned meaning a shamanic shifter using a totem.


That's my take on Lupa's meaning. Keep the questions coming if you're confused by anything. I for one am more than happy to answer them to the best of my ability.

Ahh, now it makes sense.
Thank Byakko.

I was trying to get my head around a person who seemed (to me) to be saying that you could either be born a Therian/Were or perhaps you could be acted upon by an outside influence (I thought she meant bitten!!!) and that would make you into one. That is something everyone here says is absolutely impossible, so I didn't understand.
But now I do.
Thanks.
And I appreciate you saying that you don't mind answering my questions too, that's great.

Kes.

Haha, don't worry, Lupa isn't a total fluff ball. She occasionally suffers from horrid grammar and punctuation and is sometimes a hair confusing, but she's otherwise the awesome. No problem, I'm here to help and such where I can

Byakko summed it up nicely. When she's talking about external influences she is talking about totemism, animal skins etc. etc.