Kobald wrote: ↑Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:40 am
[...]This question comes to mind every now and then and I wonder.... Seeing many different kind of Shifters with wich different conjurers are working with...I cannot help but wonder how these Shifters and Shifters of any kind, came to be.... [...]
It's not an easy question. If I asked, how did Fairies come to be, how did Elves come to be, Angels and so on? These are also not easy questions.
I'm tempted to say they just are and leave it at that. But I'll try and think it through.
From an anthropological, study of human history point of view, there are antecedents that might give a bit of a clue to how we got to the point where we're talking about part animal-part human beings in the 21st century. Cave paintings from 40,000 -20,000 years ago in different parts of the world show part-human, part-animal figures. Shamanism, as we call it, the oldest known human belief system, seems to have involved contact with spirits that presented as animals, or part human and part animal.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50754303
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux
To me it's not clear whether they were shapeshifters so much as energy / spirit beings that could manifest in more than one way. (Don't forget, scientists say humans are simply evolved animals, so it's not strange at all that our earliest ancestor spirits could have been animal-related. And totem animals may have started off as literally the spirits that looked after certain non-human species. At some point those spirits may have started looking after (or working with) hominids then Neanderthal humans then modern humans.
Why don't we just always see spirits as pure energy? This is another deep question. Maybe we see more easily what we can relate to. And relatable may have meant seeing a spirit with a relatable body or head, like that of an animal or human. With time humans probably formed expectations of what they looked like, then that became traditional for those spirits to take that form in manifestations.
And Shamans have long taken on animal characteristics in their ceremonies and workings. In fact, I'm tempted to say shape shifting on an energetic level isn't weird at all.
When it comes to cryptids - the idea that there have been physical animals, or humans, on planet Earth that could physically shapeshift is a different thing. There isn't incontrovertible physical evidence. So not everyone believes in them. But the idea of shapeshifting has been in our minds since prehistory and Shamanism.
at Full Moon, or being bit by another Werewolf etc. .... My knowledge is pretty limited here...
").... But how about other kind of shifters then?
Aster
Jupiter
or the egg 
