About Werelibrary.com

What the library is

Werelibrary.com is a place to read. It holds guides to therianthropy and otherkin identity, accounts of werewolf and shapeshifter folklore from around the world, a glossary, a short history, and a small collection of essays, stories and poems.

It is written for three kinds of visitor. The first is the person who has begun to wonder about themselves and wants somewhere quiet to think. The second is the parent, friend, teacher or counselor who has heard one of these words and would like to understand it. The third is the reader who simply loves old stories about foxes and wolves and seal wives. All three are welcome, and we have tried to write every page so that none of them feels talked past.

Why "were"

In Old English, wer meant a man. It survives in werewolf, the man-wolf. When the first therians found one another in the early 1990s, among people who loved werewolf stories, "were" was the name they took for themselves, and for some years a wolf person was a werewolf, a cat person a werecat, a bear person a werebear. The word has since given way to therian, but it is remembered with affection.

The library keeps the old word in its name for two reasons. It honors where the community came from. And it joins, in four letters, the two halves of what we shelve here: the people and the stories.

Why a garden

Many of the oldest stories about people and animals begin in a garden, in a time when the two could speak to one another and neither was afraid. It seemed the right picture for a library that asks its readers to consider, without alarm, that the line between the human and the animal has always been drawn in more than one place.

So the library is laid out as a walled garden with its gate left open. At its center stands a great tree with a spring among its roots, and from the tree four paths lead out, one for each of our main collections. There are beds of labeled plants, which is the glossary; an arbor with shelves under it, which is the stacks; a sundial, which is the history; and, under the tree, a bench beside the still pool, for anyone who wants to stop reading and simply sit. The catalog is the plan of the whole.

A garden is also a made thing, tended by hand, that takes its time. We would like the library to be read in that spirit.

Who keeps it

The library is kept by a small circle of volunteers who write under pen names, as has long been the custom in these communities. Between them they have many years of reading in folklore and of acquaintance with therian and otherkin writing.

Alder Thornwake keeps the catalog and the glossary, and has the last word on definitions.
Wren Tarnlow keeps the folklore shelves and retells many of the old tales.
Sable Quillfeather keeps the stacks, and edits the essays and poems.
Bracken Moorlight tends the garden itself: its paths, its plan and its small drawings.

The keepers are not clinicians, and nothing here is medical or psychological advice. The editorial principles explain how pages are written and what standards they are held to.

What the library is not

It is not a forum, a social network or a club. There are no accounts to create, no comments to post and nothing to join. It carries no advertising and sells nothing. It does not track its readers; the privacy page says exactly what it does and does not store.

It is not the voice of any community. Therians and otherkin have no central body, and no site speaks for them. The library describes, as fairly as it can, what is widely said and done, and marks the points on which people differ.

And it is not finished. Pages are revised as understanding improves, and each carries the date on which it was last tended.

Using the library

Everything here may be read freely. Short passages may be quoted with a mention of where they came from. If you are new, the page on therianthropy is the usual place to begin, and the frequent questions answer the things most people ask first. If you are troubled, please read wellbeing and care.

Otherwise, walk where you like. The gate does not close.