Then there's the matter of Spirit Animals. I don't have one. I don't want one, I don't need one. And according to some, that disqualifies me as a furry. Gee, didn't realize I had to realign my entire belief system to ensure acceptance into an already-decrepit fanbase. Once again, the question of personal tastes intruding on a once-meaningful practice comes to mind. You'll find a good thousand spastics claiming the protection of the Fox, But I've yet to hear a furry fan thank the Earwig Spirit for his wisdom. Yes, I'm taunting you. Cope.
Of course, anti-Furry assholes who can not think for themselves and prefer to have their opinions spoon fed to them have picked up on this aspect of Furry-dom for bashing Furs. Squee Rat, being the imbecile that she is, doesn't "get it" (SURPRISE!) "Gee, didn't realize I had to realign my entire belief system to ensure acceptance into an already-decrepit fanbase" -- take the "chill pill" the nice man in the white lab coat gave you, Squee. Things will be looking better before you know it. Here is a case in point:
It's not the fetishes that disturb me, I have a strong stomach and by myself I'm laid back about people's sex lives. No, what gets me is the "WELL I AM A FOX!! For serious! Don't let my effete human form fool you, for I am dextrous, wily, and EVERYONE wants to have sex with me!". It's attention-seeking bullshit. Erotic fursonas are mostly a way to channel a mundane sex life and be revered for basically being a dipshit. Then the whole "fursecution" complex comes into play, and by then I'm ashamed to be human. Yes, human, for no matter how hard anyone tries they are not a noble wolf, they are a weak and vulnerable human being. *Sigh* Once people start insisting they're the repressed spirits of cockroaches and hagfish, then I'll listen.
Note: I'm keeping this poster from a certain forum anonymous. Furthermore, I'm not mentioning the forum in question, as it has many other members who are OK folks. It's a genuine quote.
Even after all the intervening years since the Great Internet Furry Flame War, this dipshit can do nothing more than parrot Squee Rat, right down to the mention of "repressed spirits of cockroaches", and the inclusion of the "Sigh's". I guess he accounts the substitution of "hagfish" for "earwig" as original thinking. Just when you get to thinking that Furry hating fuck-tards can't possibly get any more pathetic...
The fandom does contain those Furry Spiritualists who do believe that they are really wolves, etc. who were assigned the wrong body in some sort of great Cosmic Fuck-up. These would be the otherkin/therianthrope/were contingent. Others may believe that their souls have an animal aspect. Still others may believe that they were animals in a former life. There are also those who believe in Spirit Animal guides. There is certainly nothing here that is either new or unique to Furry. Some assholes call these beliefs "delusional".
delusional
1. an abnormal state characterized by the occurrence of psychotic delusions.
2a. something that is falsely believed or propagated.
2b. persistent false psychotic belief regarding the self or persons or objects outside the self.
How easily that word slides off the lips of the Furry-bashers. Do these people realize that by using this word, "delusional", that they are stating that everyone who claims a spirit animal is clinically insane? Would that include the shamans of the various Native American tribes, the Polynesians, etc. Or is it that such beliefs are perfectly OK for red, brown, and black complected peoples, but not for white folks of European extraction?
Our anonymous dipshit: "No, what gets me is the 'WELL I AM A FOX!! For serious! Don't let my effete human form fool you, for I am dextrous, wily, and EVERYONE wants to have sex with me!'" Fair enough: you told us what "gets you"; allow me to tell you what gets me. There are those who believe that God sent his spirit to fornicate with another man's fiancee to breed God's bastard son. If you don't believe on this son, and surrender every aspect of your life to him, your soul is tormented forever and forever in a lake of fire that seems will never run out of fuel. These folks are called "Protestants". So calling upon the name of Jesus Christ is your free "get out of hell card"? Well, not exactly: if you are not one of the "elect", selected from the very beginning of time for salvation, then you are well and truly fucked. Call on the name of "De Lawd" all you want: it'll do you no good in the end. These are called "Calvinists".
Others maintain that anyone can be "saved", however, it is necessary to work out your salvation in "fear and trembling" for the rest of your life since your salvation may be taken away at any time. These are called "Armenians". According to yet other theories, both the Calvinists and Armenians are going straight to hell:
COUNCIL OF TRENT
The Thirteenth Session
ON THE MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST:
CANON VI.
If any one saith, that, in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist, Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, is not to be adored with the worship, even external of latria; and is, consequently, neither to be venerated with a special festive solemnity, nor to be solemnly borne about in processions, according to the laudable and universal rite and custom of holy church; or, is not to be proposed publicly to the people to be adored, and that the adorers thereof are idolators; let him be anathema.
Meet the Roman Catholics, according to whom there is no salvation to be had outside the church (since amended by Vatican Council II -- which brings up an interesting question: Have all those non-Catholics been sprung from hell?). Imagine that: a good 800 million spastics actually worship a cookie! Indeed, these utterly batshit insane whackos have tortured and murdered tens of thousands in wars and Inquisitions over the question of transubstantiation vs. consubstantiation. Say what you will about ignorant, idol-worshipping pagans, at least the majority of pagan idols are also exquisite works of art, and not bakery goods.
Hyoomans will believe the damnedest things.
See how that works? It's all a matter of perspective as to how you choose to view the beliefs of others. Make no mistake about this: it is a deliberate choice. Anything can be seen as "freaky", "delusional", "insane". The one and only difference is that there are more Christians of various stripes than there are Furry spiritualists. Since when has argumentum ad populum been dropped as a logical fallacy? At one time, not too long ago on the historic time scale, the majority of people believed that Earth was flat. Majorities can be wrong. Furthermore, can anyone prove that the one belief is true and the other false? If someone wants to tell me all about his wolf soul, or the Christian wants to tell me about his immortal soul, can either one actually prove it? If not, then it's all a matter of guess work and speculation, if not outright fantasy. No one's beliefs have the power to "get you" unless you choose to let them "get you".
As for Furry spirituality, I will worry about it when:
And not one damn nanosecond sooner!
Here is yet another clue that the Burned Furs™ had a hidden agenda. How is believing that one is a misplaced wolf, or that one owes one's success to the guidance of the Lynx, or that one was once a fox in a previous life, etc. going to pose any sort of embarrassment to the fandom as a whole? Now Squee makes a big fucking deal over those who would deny your own personal Furriness if you do not share these beliefs. They are just being assholes, as no one can tell you how to "do Furry". At worst, it's a minor annoyance. Besides, how often has something like that actually happened to you? Attacking one's beliefs is sure fire flame war material, is it not?
Suppose the belief resulted from a combination of life experience, intense soul searching, meditation, and the study of shamanistic religions? Would you still call this person "delusional"? If you would, then, perhaps it's you, Mr. Furry Hating Fuck-tard, who has some soul searching and contemplation to do? Ya think?
One Furry basher on the forums of a notorious Furry hate web site had this to say: "Animals can't have some other animal or person stuck in their body." The dipshit actually "thought" that he had the A Number One argument against the Furry spiritualist. Oh really? No one ever believed this?
Let us suppose that the human anatomy was primordially different from its present form, that it gradually transformed from one stage to another until it attained its present likeness, that at one time it was similar to a fish, later an invertebrate and finally human. This anatomical evolution or progression does not alter or affect the statement that the development of man was always human in type and biological in progression. [...] Realizing this we may acknowledge the fact that at one time man was an inmate of the sea, at another an invertebrate, then a vertebrate and finally a human being standing erect.
-- Abdul-Baha
Hey you Furry bashing fuckstick: you just insulted the belief of some six million Baha'i's. Human souls in animal forms is a tenet of this faith. Or how about this:
It was believed that foxes harboured the souls and spirits of good people who had died. It was considered that if you did a fox a good turn, good luck would come your way. How the times have changed!
-- European Folk Belief
Yeah, NO ONE ever believed in human souls in animals. Gee, ya got us!
Now my background is science and engineering. There is, of course, no scientific proof of the existence of souls, or incarnations of souls in the "wrong" bodies. However, whenever I get to thinking that scientists know everything, I remind myself of the physicist William Thompson (a.k.a. Lord Kelvin). Thompson was arguably the greatest scientist ever. It was Lord Kelvin who, in the 1890s, delivered a speech to the Royal Academy where he proclaimed that science knew it all. There were to be no new developments, just nothing more than more precise measurements and minor refinements of theoretical physics as the mid 1890s understood this. Congress considered closing down the US Patent Office; universities considered whacking science departments. If Lord Kelvin said it, why then it must be so.
Meanwhile:
On 8 November 1895, German physics professor Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845-1923) worked in his darkened Wurzburg laboratory. His experiments focused on light phenomena and other emissions generated by discharging electrical current in highly-evacuated glass tubes. These tubes, known generically as "Crookes tubes," after the British investigator William Crookes (1832-1919), were widely available. Roentgen was interested in cathode rays and in assessing their range outside of charged tubes.
To Roentgen's surprise, he noted that when his cardboard-shrouded tube was charged, an object across the room began to glow. This proved to be a barium platinocyanide-coated screen too far away to be reacting to the cathode rays as he understood them. We know little about the sequence of his work over the next few days, except that while holding materials between the tube and screen to test the new rays, he saw the bones of his hand clearly displayed in an outline of flesh. It is impossible for observers accustomed to modern imaging to gauge the mixture of wonder and disbelief Roentgen must have felt that day. He plunged into seven weeks of meticulously planned and executed experiments to determine the nature of the rays. He worked in isolation, telling a friend simply, "I have discovered something interesting, but I do not know whether or not my observations are correct." In fact, one wonders if Roentgen's experiments were as much to convince himself of the reality of his observations as to enhance the scientific data supporting the phenomenon.
This was the discovery that proved that Lord Kelvin was as full of shit as a Thanksgiving turkey. News of the discovery spread with lightening speed (given the times) proving that science did not know it all. Roentgen's discovery finally broke some 40 years of complacency within the scientific community. Reinvigorated scientific research would lead, in quick succession, to Quantum Mechanics (Max Planc) and Relativity (Albert Einstein) that would open new frontiers of discovery that 1890's physicists could not have imagined in their wildest flights of fancy. Lord Kelvin has got to go down as the person who made the biggest ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS of himself in history. Not a very good way to cap an otherwise illustrious career, now is it?
In this spirit, I am not willing to proclaim that there can be nothing to what Furry spiritualists claim. No one knows what discoveries are to be made. Secondly, I can not dismiss observation. In India there arose the belief that the fox was a special animal. This idea went east to Asia to give rise to the tales of the kitsune (Japan) and the spirit fox (China), and traveled west to Europe, where we've already seen a folk belief. It is obvious that Indian stories, myths, and legends would follow trade routes. It is not surprising that foxes would be held in special esteem in this part of the world.
How, then, to account for Native American beliefs about foxes that are nearly identical? How to account for Native American stories that mirror precisely the stories of kitsune and Chinese spirit foxes? Recently, I saw a documentary on the reintroduction of the swift fox to Montana. The Native Americans rejoiced at the return of what they referred to as a "soul animal". Where did that come from? Even if you want to appeal to unrecorded, unproven, and purely speculative, shipwrecks of either European or Chinese ships, these fox beliefs occured a thousand miles from any coast. I am not willing to glibly dismiss the possibility that identical beliefs arising independently in isolated human cultures arise from identical causes: the fox really is a "soul animal", and fox spirits may communicate in similar ways to both the Indian shaman and the suburbanite Furry fan who is ready to receive. As for the claim that no one ever picks "yuckie" animal spirits, guides, or incarnations, perhaps the reason for that is that only the higher animals have souls. Foxes, wolves, dolphins, various felines which account for all the spirit animals are all higher animals. It is possible that no one claims the "Ear Wig" spirit simply because no such thing exists?
If you get to thinking that this business of spirit animals, animal aspects to a human soul or reincarnation is crazy, stop for a minute and remember Lord Kelvin. Science does not "know it all". Physicists have known for decades that Quantum Mechanics is deeply flawed (indeed, Einstein himself spent the rest of his life trying to discover a better theory). We have no way of knowing what new discoveries -- appearing as suddenly and as unexpectedly as Roentgen's discovery of x-rays -- may appear from the far fringes of speculative physics. There always exists the possibility that some discovery will scientifically confirm all these beliefs regarding souls.
As for the beliefs of the Furry Spiritualist, such beliefs are not connected in any way to an organized religion. Large parts of the theology of the major, organized religions are clearly tainted by concerns purely political in nature. It's not so much about God or spirituality as it is about keeping the "sheep" from straying too far from the "fold" for their regular "sheerings". The Roman Catholic manipulation of guilt over thoughts and feelings, especially the sexual ones, has long been legendary. The Protestants are no better, holding hell-fire 'n' brimstone over the heads of their congregations. Furry Spirituality has the advantage of blowing all that bullshit away. This, in turn, opens the door for deeper spiritual development.
As for the charge that Furry is a "cult", nothing could be farther from the truth. Every cult revolves around some charismatic figure: the "prophet", "magi", "guru",etc. There are no leaders in Furry, and Furries are notorious in not being followers. Sometimes this is not such a good thing, in that it makes long-term collaboration on a major artistic endeavour extremely difficult. Of course, there is always the possibility that someone might try to build a cult around these beliefs. I highly doubt that this would get very far.
In conclusion, whose beliefs are crazier? Those of Otherkin or Furry spiritualists, or the dipshits, fuck-tards, and assholes who refuse to believe one good thing about Furries and our fandom?
Gee, now there's a tough choice.