I've had enough, take me home
There are some people in this world who call themselves Guardians or Fae Folk or Otherkin or Wyldfae or Elderkin or Theriomorphs or any one or more of a host of different monikers which point not so much to an active imagination but to an active sense of self-dissatisfaction. Even some of those who are simply pagan, or who prefer to be known as magickians succumb to the particular brand of one-upmanship which is the subect of this tirade. And the subject is?
The habit of referring to non-practitioners as "mundanes" or "UnAwakened".
I cannot begin to describe the amount of distaste I have for this habit. On the surface all may look harmless enough, but the sheer arrogance involved in this form of descripton really, upon examination, beggars belief.
Let's just start with the "mundane" adjective, shall we? It bears the brunt of my hatred for the sheer depthlessly innocuous nature of the term.
mundane mun-dãn', adj worldly; earthly; cosmic; ordinary, banal.
Now. If only I thought, even for a moment, that those that use this despicable form of reference took the meaning to be those first three, then I might not need to vent my spleen. Unfortunately, to a man, they are referring to the latter of these, and with the kind of snide disparagement which would earn them a swift slap round the face with a wet fish or a chainsaw (whichever was easiest to hand) were they use it to the face of one so described. Perhaps the best example of the method of hinted insult this forms is given by the character Bester's use of the word to describe non-telepaths in the programme "Babylon 5".
The implication of this term is that somehow the one using it is inherently of a superior nature to the one being described. "Any more anecdotes? I just love freak-the-mundane stories" is a particularly memorable comment from a denizen of a mailing list where this despicable behaviour is rife. The implication is that there is a major fraction, some vast, general populous that is living in a grey, barely conscious existence, and that there is an elite, selected by some form of preternatural birthright, who are riding the crest of the illuminated esoteric wave of new age consciousness above them, awash in the secrets of a world so special, so wonderful, that the populous has to hide it behind a wall of near-comatose disbelief.
These are the self-same folk who use the dreaded phrase, which I have already mentioned and it pains me to repeat, "UnAwakened" [sic] as a synonym for the (exclusively) human "mundanes". The implications of this are obvious. Those that are not of a similar persuasion as themselves are sleeping, unaware of what is actually going on around them. Of course asleep equates with unconscious, which equates with dead. Those that do not share a belief that sections of the global society are in fact descended from Otherwordly beings who come from such (usually mis-spelled) places as Tir Na nOg and Eflheim are, according to this awakened elite, merely brain dead cattle whose only purpose is to provide them with an audience for their purported magickal abilities. These are, of course, the magickal abilities that are often openly admitted to have come from the White Wolf RPG and others of its ilk.
I am at a loss to explain this odious phenomenon. I can see no reason for anyone to consider themselves of a superior nature even if they do come from some strange far off place where people have fur and fangs and communicate using pheromones. I can see no reason for anyone to think of themselves as some sort of ascendancy just because they have led a life which leads them to a state of such unhappiness they have to think of some strange origin for this "spirit" within them. They are not unhappy with themselves, oh no! They could not possibly be unhappy with the sad, tragic, purposeless, pointless fact of their own existence. That would be a "mundane" kind of attitude. Can you not see? They are all too obviously unhappy with being forced to slum it in human shape on this dying planet and one day all the rest of you brain dead mundanes out there are going to feel the full force of their mighty magik.
I have watched, incredulous, as these so-called Otherkin have claimed to be dragons in human form, to the extent that you can see they stand to balance their tails when they walk. They even have a word for the marvel of making their non-human nature visible - "bleeding". Their true nature "bleeds over" from the astral plane into the - you guessed it - mundane.
Forced by sheer bewilderment to seek some sort of explanation, I can only assume that this is somewhat akin to the equally tragic event of cultural misappropriation which leads people who have never even been to Europe to claim a "Celtic" nationality. They might not know what you are talking about when you mention p and q Gaelic, but by jove they know that the Morrigan is a great reason to be a bitch. They might live in Austin, Texas and not even realise that Cornish and Breton are languages, but they can find themselves one of the Sidhe with whom to fall in love. And don't they just get so cross when you ask a few pointed questions.
I have not made myself popular amongst the various and sundry groups who claim Celtic or Otherworldy ancestry (and there is an unsurprising amount of cross-over between the two). When faced with such obvious fantasy victims as the university student who claimed to be an honest-to-goodness second generation Chaos Demon (on the maternal side, of course) whose "special attack" was Chaosurge, or the one who explained he was a Wilderkin with large furry ears and fangs and a tendency towards involuntary glass-melting during electrical storms, it is a challenge in self-control to stop oneself laughing long enough to get to the end of the message, and even more of a challenge to prevent oneself rapping out a scathing reply of such ferocity that the list-owner makes one persona non grata and the entertainment goes off-limits.
It is educational enough to read these lists in order to wonder at the severe reaction it causes in oneself, given a fairly reasonable nature and a passing familiarity with the delights of Sir William of Occam. I find it amazing that this sort of thing is spreading, and find myself wishing to find the makers of these RPGs and shake them firmly by the scruff of the neck while screaming "What the fuck did you think you were doing? Could you not see that you were going to unleash a force far worse than the fluffbunny brigade upon the face of this Earth?"
We must be understanding however, we must be tolerant. Everyone has a right to their own beliefs, no matter how crazy, no matter how ridiculous. Fair enough. I am capable of tolerance (although it would help if they seemed to know the actual background to the terms and phrases borrowed and paraphrased by the games from which they take their beliefs). I will not, however, tolerate this arrogance, this attitude of superiorty. A belief in Theriomorphs and the Unmaking, the Mage Wars and Veilshifting does not make one any better than the man next door who believes in working all day to make enough money to feed and keep his family and going out with friends for a game of darts or pool on a Friday night. The man who is concerned with such matters as whether he is going to get the next promotion and whether or not his children are doing well at school is no less inherently valuable than the man who cruises the internet looking for demon-summoning techniques and practising sword skills with bokkan in the park so that he should be ready the day they physically cross over to the Otherworld. Indeed, I know with which I would rather drink.
Game of pool, anybody?