Religion really isn’t my area of expertise because I’m not a very spiritual person.  Nor do I have any religious experiences to speak of.  I just ask questions and try to understand why people believe what they believe.

 

But although I wouldn’t completely say they area of therianthropy is my area of “expertise” (it’s not; I can just speak better about it because it’s something that I experience), I’m much more knowledgeable in this area.  So I’m taking a tiny break from talking about religion to fill out my Therianthropy section a bit more.

 

First of all, therianthropy isn’t something religious.  It doesn’t even have to be spiritual and I shall explain this much later on.  It is a term derived from the greek words meaning “beast/wild animal” (therion) and “man” (anthropos).  A therianthrope (therian for short) is one who feels that they are human plus another animal.  A big misconception I believe is that some people believe that therians don’t acknowledge that they’re human.  We know that we’re human.  We can’t deny that.  Any person who denies that they are human are just fooling themselves.  We just feel a connection with some other species of animal that seems almost unexplainable.

 

The largest misconception about therianthropy is that it’s something religious.  Therianthropy has absolutely nothing to do with religion nor does it get in the way of any personal spiritual beliefs a person might hold.  You can be anything from Christian to Pagan to Atheist and still identify as a therian.

 

So far I’ve just been speaking about therianthropy as if it were spiritual so you might ask how an Atheist might come to believe they’re a therian.  The answer is quite simple.  “Therianthrope” is just a title based upon two greek words.  There is no singular definition for what makes a person a therian.  While the majority of therians might believe they have animal souls or a spiritual tie to some species of animals, there are a few of us (me included) who feel that the phenomenon is entirely psychological.  It’s something that might be able to be explained with some research.

 

I used to believe in the more spiritual explanations for therianthropy, but over time I started to feel like that didn’t explain anything.  It was easy to say that I had the soul of a dog and leave it at that.  But that didn’t make sense.  After studying the subject more, I found more people who felt like this might be a psychological phenomenon rather than a spiritual one.  I felt more comfortable looking at this thing that I was experiencing as something psychological rather than spiritual.

 

For me, I believe it’s something that was triggered by the extreme fear of dogs I had when I was little coupled with my extreme love of werewolves and animal transformation.  The mind is quite the powerful tool and without realizing it I suppose I’d taken on some canine behaviors.  I no longer have have a fear of dogs so it’s not a coping mechanism anymore.  It’s just become a part of my personality.  When I get angry, I have no desire to yell or rant or anything that people typically do.  Instead I want to growl, teeth bared and all.  When I become very playful, I want to be petted.  When I become sad I want to whimper and whine.  When I smell something good, I’ll want to follow the scent and find where it’s coming from.  These can also be written off as awkward quirks and sometimes just think of them in this way.  However I can’t shake my desire to be a canine rather than human.  It’s not a continuous feeling, but the moments where I do feel that can be a little unbearable.

 

I’ll write more on the subject much later on.  There’s so much to be explored with therianthropy and my experiences with it.  Anything down from types of “shifts” to species dysphoria and more.