I don’t know a single therian who hasn’t dreamed of waking up one day in the body of their theriotype, myself included. This is with the knowledge that, in my personal case, I would be a creature out of time and out of place with my current surroundings, and yet the desire is still there. To be able to express on the outside that which we know ourselves to be on the inside is a drive that encourages strange practices among therians and otherkin – sometimes this expresses itself in the form of extreme tattooing and other body modification, but more often it’s just a secret longing. And again, I don’t know a single therian who hasn’t longed for that taboo phrase – P-shift.
P-shift has become the accepted therian term for that which we see in every classic werewolf movie and book, and in quite a few ancient stories… but never in real modern life. That is, the actual physical act of shifting into your theriotype, that your human body becomes that of an animal. The desire to be able to do this – especially to be able to do it at-will, is a huge part of therianthropy for most therians. Now, this is widely accepted in the therianthrope community as being impossible – but there are those who believe it not only possible, but claim to have done it. In the interest of political correctness, I’m going to treat this as if it were a viable possibility, though I admit that my own personal opinion is that it is simply impossible. As for what that says for those who believe they have done it, well… That is open to interpretation.
Generally, to claim to have successfully P-shifted is something that will get you ostracized from the therianthrope community. Yet people insist that it be believed without proof – these people usually prove to either be trolls, or delusional. Sometimes they simply drop off the face of the internet after making these claims, which always leads some people to believe that their claims were true – but perhaps the final transformation was one way. In general, though, even the term P-shift is looked down on in the communities – the unattainable mountaintop that all therians wish we could reach but know is impossible. So in general, unless the topic is more of a “what if” topic, you generally won’t see this kind of shift discussed.
So what if? What if I could become my theriotype – run as a dire wolf, or fly as a red-tailed hawk? Would I still retain my human mind? Or would the shift be a one way trip, and the decision have to be made before the shift was undertaken – do I want to never come back from this? I admit, there was a time in my life when the answer would have been yes. But I look around me now and… How many people could I help if I were fully wolf? How could I contribute to the world, be with the people I love, if I were no longer in this human form? The answer is that there’s almost no way – especially if the shift also involved me losing my human mind as well as my human shape. When I astral shift, I am aware that I am a physical and mental human that is allowing her more animalistic side to show through on the astral plane, and I’m still aware of time, and people, and everything – if I could speak, I would. And I always return to my body.
I’ve heard far too many therians scream in defiance that they would simply up and leave their human lives if only they could – and that worries me. What level of intolerance and misunderstanding must you be facing to be willing to turn your back on the body you were born into? No matter what we are on a spiritual level, one thing some therians don’t seem to give enough consideration to is that we are also human. It takes a human mind to even fathom the concept of therianthropy, or of a soul at all. It takes our intelligence, our very humanity, to conceive of being more than what we appear to be.
I used to be one of those therians who would wish to simply shift and fly away, or run away. But I’ve been through a lot in recent years and it’s changed my way of thinking. I realize now that I need more. I need my humanity, and my animal side to make me the complete person I am. I either chose to be this way in this life, or it was chosen for me by a higher power – for whatever reason, I believe there is a purpose to it. Perhaps the purpose is as simple as blogs such as this to help other people along in their discoveries of themselves. Or perhaps I haven’t even found my calling yet. All I know is that I don’t know – and that is a very human concept.
There are other, lesser known types of shifts as well, but in this series we have covered the most prevalent, and most of those lesser known types can be lumped in underneath these labels. For links to all previous articles in this section, please see the Essays portion of my site, or simply click the Shift Happens tag at the end of this post. Thank you all for reading my first blog series! Let’s hope for plenty more to come!
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