Some people have messaged me inquiring about why I wrote the Therian Bible and about the beginnings of the Therian Temple.
I figured that the best way to answer everyone at once would be to explain the history in a blog here.
To get to the very root of the story, I must take you back several years.
In the mid 1980s when I first witnessed a real wolf firsthand.
I was in Illinois at night in my older cousin’s car, and she pulled over to let her boyfriend get out of the car and relieve himself.
This happened to be at the edge of a large Forest Preserve.
I wandered away from the group a bit and stepped into the dark woods very quietly, and to this day, I am unsure what drew me to do this.
I saw a Grey Wolf walking through a clearing. I stared silently, both excited and surprised at once, but not really scared, although, perhaps some would say I should have been.
I had always liked wolves and kept posters, t-shirts, etc. of them, but now seeing the Wolf in Nature, I felt a much closer bond to them.
The Wolf’s movements reminded me of my own, the wolf’s reaction to our encounter seemed to mimic mine. I wanted to go with the Wolf, but my cousin called for me and the animal disappeared into the darkness.
As I grew older, I always remembered that experience. In retrospect, I thought of the danger of even thinking that I could or should run off into the woods with a Wolf.
It would not be a sensible thing to do, and I knew better, yet I kept having that “feeling” of wanting to run free in Nature, just as the Wolf does. My friends and family would always joke that I was a “Werewolf” because I had so much Wolf & Werewolf memorabilia, had a quick temper, and was somewhat unusually strong for a female of my height.
Personally, I thought of myself as a “Lycanthrope” for lack of a better term at the time, but I never thought I could physically “become” a Wolf– to me, I already was a Wolf.
I did realize that those who had been identified as “Werewolves” in the past were Persecuted, and often, killed, so I didn’t want to reveal that I took this concept of identity seriously without having some very good explanations to back it up. I began to keep a Journal of ideas
about the concept of humans with animal personalities, and the best ways to control inevitable “Shifts” that come with such a personality.
When I was in High School, I was interested in various world cultures including Japan, and I read a book titled “A History of the Japanese People from the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era”. In discussing the manners and customs of Shinto adherents, the author described the belief in “Therianthropic Elements” of their Humanoid Deities.
While I had always understood many of the Ancient Pantheons (including Egyptian and others) as being metaphorical representations of Humans with Animal personalities (faces), I never had a proper term for this Concept, and at this moment, It all came together. Yes, I was like a Wolf, but there were all sorts of people with various Animal-typed personalities. Cat-people, Squirrel-People, Bird-People, etc.
As I read more about the ancient Shinto, I saw some useful elements of their practices.
While I did not believe in or worship Animalistic deities, the idea of combining Animal archetypes with Ritual and “removal of pollution” from the body & mind seemed to be very in tune with Nature and positive for mental clarity.
If the worship of the deities is removed from the equation, almost any system of belief could be syncretically combined with this practice, and generally, to the benefit of the practitioner.
I did more and more research every year on this topic over the years, reading every manner of Occult and Folklore book referencing Werewolves, Witches who turned into Cats, Winged Women, and so on.
Throughout my late teen and early twenties years, I experimented with various Traditional* Occult Ritual formats, integrating the removal of pollution idea and animal archetypes, taking notes on which worked best, i.e. which created the most natural, intense and enjoyable Shift
during, and created the most peaceful, decompressed feeling afterward.
Fast forward to the late 1990s / early 2000s. All the while, I have been collecting notes and clippings on Occult sciences, especially those pertaining to the “Therianthropic element’ concept.
The concept had for years been bleeding heavily into my music and art, with more and more images and songs referencing Lycanthropy and Therianthropic ideas.
The “Werewolf” idea had become such a major part of my public image it was getting to the point where I felt I had better explain what I was talking about, lest people think I am promoting the idea that people can transform into wolves and gain super-human strength, or fly, etc.. I had all this research and knowledge regarding the “Therianthropic element’, yet what use was it to keep it all to myself, and only “hint” at the idea artistically?
I didn’t want others like me to get the wrong idea and go off into a false, and possibly dangerous path.
This became especially important to me as I saw the internet Therian subculture grow with many people spreading dangerous ideas into the community, telling them they are invincible, to hurt people, etc.
I pondered ways to communicate to others the most positive applications of Therianthropy.
So many years worth of quotes and notes added up to a confusing pile of information that needed a lot of coordination to assemble all of this into something usable by others like myself, those with Animal personalities, who can benefit from Ritual decompression.
One summer night in 2005, I invoked a very intense mental shift and sat down with a stack of unlined paper and a #2 Pencil.
I laid out the papers and notepads, and set out to compile all these years of research into something streamlined enough that one wouldn’t need to be a scholar to be able to grasp the concepts within.
The Theriogram symbol made its way onto the paper first. After that, the words flowed naturally and the text was written without a break in one all-night session.
This text became the Therian Bible. It remained unedited to represent the exact way I wrote it during the Shift, leading some to criticize the punctuation, etc., but this is unimportant to me.
The text is the Word of the Wolf, in the Wolf’s words. It is simplistic and primal, and purposely so. One must build from a simple base their own applications of Therian Magic.
Heavy books full of potions, dogmatic formulas, and Numerological meanderings are not the stuff of the Inner Beast, the Most Primal Self.
The Therian Bible was written for Therians, not for the general public or literary reviewers.
Initially, I just distributed the book completely DIY, and people had to get it directly from me.
Then I met a gentleman who is known as Fenrir Therion. He had ordered the book, utilized it, and was enthralled with the ideas within.
He was interested in connecting Therians who used this system, and I informed him that I had considered the idea of building a community/organization around the Therian Bible.
Thus was born the idea of the Therian Temple. I sent out a questionnaire to those who had ordered the book, and from the responses found the first members of the Therian Temple.
Fenrir had begun to use some proto-logos and talk about Therian Temple to some of his online friends, and as more people asked what we were about, we decided that it was time to open the group to the Public and build a website.
In August 2006, we opened the Therian Temple website and started accepting Memberships from around the world.
Fenrir began to explain our beliefs to some communities online and some responded well, some not so well.
Many people were initially afraid of us, but who isn’t afraid of a real live Wolf?
Many people called us “secretive”, as if that’s a bad thing, because we do not release membership information or numbers.
In reality, most of members would not feel safe to join a group based on such a controversial concept if we weren’t “secretive”.
Over the years, Therian Temple has been discriminated against sometimes, but at the same time, we have found many allied minds who are supportive of our ways.
We have met all sorts of interesting and intelligent people who have become TT members, as well as several nutcases whose membership was denied, but hopefully, no feelings were hurt too badly.
We have been praised and condemned, but all in all, I think we are off to a Fine Start…..And we plan to continue our efforts to positively contribute to the Therian Community worldwide, through literature, online activities, events, and more.
HAIL THE INNER BEAST!
TEMPLUS THERION ETERNUS!
HP N. Noctis
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