I've reached a sort of stablilty in daemianism. I'm past the point of the overexited newb who gets butterflies in anticipation of reading another analysis. I know who I am, I've got almost nowhere left to go with myself.

And, although I didn't think that it would turn out this way, I'm not bored at all. I expected this point to be a dead end, to make me look for something else. But it's not. It's rather like a new, calm begining. Not something that captures you and takes up your every though or something that you think much about at all about, but something that seems right. In some intangible way, my entire life is falling slowly and calmly into place.

I no longer need to worry about settling. I don't need to feel guilty when I don't project Sefra enough. I wake up, I say goodmorning to him. Maybe I project him during the day, maybe I don't. Maybe we talk more, maybe we just enjoy each other's company. I get in bed, say goodnight, and he's with me in my dreams.

It's a very low-pressure relationship. We're not obligated to talk, because there's nothing else to discover. We know who we are and why we're here, and that's good enough for both of us.

I used to worry that it was strange to talk to Sefra. I used to worry that I wouldn't find my form, that there wouldn't be one. And now, for the life of me, I can't think why.

Sefra is who he is exactly as I am who I am. If we talk, good. If we don't, fine. But I know that this is how I'm meant to be. I feel whole.

Memories

Memories are odd things when you're a daemian. At least, they are for me. You've got your solid, "real" memories that are exactly as you remember them (which may not be exactly as they happened, but are pretty close), and then you have daemon memories.

Daemon memories are memories of what your daemon was doing in you daemonless past, times when the two of you weren't communicating as daemon and human. They're not something that you can be sure of. But then, can you be sure of any memories?

According to my daemon memories, Sef used to swim around in the bath with me as a little fish. I used to love baths, and taking my toy animals for a swim, and he would swim about with them so that I could be closer to them.

Karl Jung might call that active imagination. Though that, so far as I know, applies to dreams, not memories. But I suppose dreams and memories aren't to dissimilar. They're both things that you can revisit again and a again, and change ever so slightly. I suppose that's what I'm doing. And the change isn't that drastic, because it all stays in my head. Dreams and memories are things of the mind, as are daemons, so it's not so unrealistic that they be added in.

This post is becoming extremely convoluted, so I think I'll stop. Perhaps I'll start a topic on TDF about daemon memories. It would be interesting to see how many other people have them.

Conversions

I feel that an update on my "conversions" is in order. Conversions to what, you may ask? Why, conversions to the wonderful way of thought of daemianism.

I've got... one, two... five, maybe six conversions (one of them an indirect one). My circle of friends now includes and otter soul, a semisettled (?) axolotl soul, a pink dolphin soul, and a couple of I'venoideahelp! souls. Ah, my herd is growing.

I'm also firmly cemented into my life as an elk. I can hardly remember how I used to psychoanalyse myself. Now, my life is one big elk analogy.

And Sef never changes, anymore. It just feels odd. I was a bit afraid that we'd want to change too much, and might not feel settled. A strange fear, I know, and completely groundless. We're very happy.

The weekend before last we went out to see the closest elk to us. We saw 40 or so, but twice as many rednecks drooling for hunting season. I was wondering why the bulls looked so small until i realised that they're shot down every year but a bunch of hicks.

I do apologize to any elk hunters out there, but I don't have much sympathy for you. And when I see pictures of Sarah Palin with her little toddler dancing around a bloodied caribou in the snow, I'm positively sickened. Our world can be such a strange place. It's one thing to hunt to live, but when there's cheap meat and (even better) fake meat to be had by any middle class family, why should we go blow the brains out of some wild animals? Sport? I wouldn't call that sporting in a million years.

Well, here I go on my vegetarian tirade. I was raised by a pack of hippie liberals, so you'll have to excuse me.

Long Time no Post

Yep, it's been ages, and bigbig news to all of my nonexistant readers.
*bigger fanfare*
We're settled!

Huzzah, hoorah, and whatnot.
I've been writing about it so much in places other than the web that I've quite run out of steam, unfortunately. I'll give it a go, though.

Well, I was bored on vacation with a rare opportunity to go online, so I scuttled off to TDF, as usual. We were in Arizona, and Sef had been trying out all of the local forms, for the flavor so to speak. We did raven, skink, coyote (briefly, we've never been much into canids), etc. The ones that we really liked were horned lizard (friggin wicked!) and desert bighorn. Sheep are obviously not me, but we looked up the analysis, anyway. No.

Then, for the hell of it, I clicked the caribou link (caribou have long been a favorite). Surprisingly, it was pretty accurate. I looked briefly for reindeer or caribou other than Peary's, but TDF didn't have more. That was when I think elk caught my eye.

Now, I'd looked at the elk analysis before, but not with a very open mind. I'd dismissed it as "not me at all", and blown on by. But this time, for some reason, everything clicked. It was so flipping perfect that I could've fallen off my chair.

We were hesitant with accepting it, at first. After all, banded mongoose had seemed pretty damn good at the time. But this one just felt right. I'd never felt anything like it in my life. I know that sounds horribly cliché, but it's true. Maybe I'd been using too many sharpies, but that's exactly how it felt. And it's kept feeling that way.

The more I research elk, the more I can find similarities. And it's utterly ridiculous that an animal's beaviour should be applied to human personalities, but it works. With a little tweak of the mind, a flick of the imagination switch, I can see myself exactly as I am in this beautiful animal.

So, Sef and were happily settled on July 14 as a Rocky Mountain elk soul. There have been snags, but most are worked out. I'm now able to categorize my friends into "bull" and "cow" friends, deending on their importance to me and their role in my life. I also have a strange and entirely unscientific explanation for why I get so many headaches, go through periods of intense hatred for my best friends, and like the odd bite of grass for lunch.

Oh, and I'm getting a bugle ringtone for my phone. Check it out.
http://www.elktalkin.com/index.html

Quasi-Settledom

So, it's been a while since my last post, and Sefra has kept his banded form this whole time. The one exception was when we visited the aquarium. He had fun trying out the shapes of all the different fish.

But we like this form. It's by no means permanent, but I think it will be stable for a while. I might think that it could be our settled form, but I still don't feel completely right with it. I love banded mongooses, but there's just something about them that doesn't feel like a perfect fit. I don't know what it is. Anyway, we're content for now.

I've also discovered that my closest cousin is also a dæmian. When we'd talked about it, I'd always assumed that dæmianism was something that interested her, but not much else. Now, though, she actually visualizes her dæmon and talks to him (though she still uses a name that I suggested for him when I was half asleep). So, I sent her some links to dæmon analyses, and she came up with a massive list of forms that, apparently, fit her. Obviously not settled. Malchior (or Malchoir to her) likes to be an oversized golden albino axolotl.

No Settlement for Me

Ok, ok. I'll admit that thinking that I was settled was a bit naïve. But, hey, it just goes to show what seven days on the Dæmon Forum can do to you.

So, Sef has gotten much better at trying different forms. It still scares us a bit that his personality changes with each new form. I guess it's all in ow we perceive the animal. Our favorite forms are still the grey cat and fish, but we've also been trying the Banded mongoose. Greylag goose is also a cool one. I love geese so much. He still doesn't like the idea of being as big as a bongo is, but there's one forum member who's convinced that that's what we are. We'll see.

I don't usually go to the zoo, but I want to go see the Banded mongooses. Apparently they have them at the zoo here. It would be great to see more than pictures.

Writing Exercises

Lots of people talk about writing out conversations with their dæmons, but I actually never have until now. I always thought, while I would have loved to, that Sef wouldn’t be able to vocalize enough to have a conversation in words, as opposed to feeling. Once again, though, he’s proven me wrong. Turns out Sef does have a lot to say.

I think this latest conversation (typed out on MS Notepad) was the first time that he called me by my name, too. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I’m always the one talking, and he seldom has to get my attention, so there was never a time when he needed or had much opportunity to say my name. I don’t know why, but that really got me. I was close to tears. Maybe I’m PMSing, or something.

Personalities

Sef and I took the Jungian personality tests, and the results came out just as expected. I'm the "counselor", INFJ, while Sef is the "mastermind", INTJ. My dad's an INTJ, too.

For those of you not familiar with Jung's personality system, mine stands for "Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging" while Sef's is "Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging".

Picture of Pseudo-Sef

I was browsing petfinder.com (as I often do when bored), and I decided to look for a picture of a cat who looks sort of like Sefra. Here's what I found, it's actually a lot like him, but his eyes are greener than the cat in the picture's. Maybe I'll photoshop it, or something.

Sefra's Human

Well, here I am: Sefra's Human. I've (or we've) been inspired by all the dæmian's blogs out there and, as I've found writing to be the best way to express myself, have decided to make one for myself and Sef.

So, some history. The question of when I "discovered" Sef is a tough one. Of course, like any kid with an over-active imagination, I had scores of imaginary friends. As I don't have any siblings, they were some of my only playmates. I honestly can't remember many of them, and I'm pretty sure that most of them weren't animals. As the daughter of a die-hard animal rights activist, it was always clear to me that animals were very different from human friends. Of course, I had imaginary pets, along with the dozens of real ones, but it wasn't until I read Pullman that I had anyone like the conventional daemon.

When I was in my Pullman craze (sometime in late Elementary school), my dæmon's name was Roger, and he was a butter-colored mouse. I suppose that the idea of a dæmon has always appealed to me so much, even when I didn't really take them seriously, because of the allure of a more human animal. An animal that had all of the elements of an animal, but could talk to you, and call you by your name, and tell you that they loved you by doing more than wagging their tale or blinking just so.

Thus was I introduced to dæmons. Of course, back then it was only a kid's game to me, not a real projection of my subconscious. But it was still fascinating, probably the most fascinating thing I'd come across since Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

I had a totem phase, too, and several attempts to settle my dæmon. That's what I call them now. I think I really started talking to "Roger" again just before the "Golden Compass" movie came out. I had started reading "His Dark Materials" again and was, once again, enraptured by the idea of the dæmon.

Maybe it was that I was more mature and Sef had already settled, but it became more real to me. Even when I was a kid, Roger wasn't real in some back corner of my head. Maybe Sef still isn't all the way real to me, now. All I know is that he makes me feel whole. I know it sounds corny and fake, but I'm totally at ease when I'm talking to him. No more worrying about how I appear to people or how I look, or any of those things that we, as human, inherently must worry about. I just feel like me, exactly as I want me to be.