Terminology

This is a list of terms that are commonly used in or around the supernatural community. This is not exhaustive, there may be more words I'm not aware of.

Supernatural: Supernaturals are individuals who are associated with or experience the supernatural in some significant way. Common supernaturals include shifters, vampires, and witches.

Vampires: Individuals who need blood or some sort of energy to sustain their physical health.

Shapeshifter (shifter, p-shifter): A shapeshifter is someone who physically (or much less commonly) spiritually transforms into another being. When talking about physical shapeshifters, the term "p-shifter" or "p-shifting" may be used.

Werewolf: A person who assumes a wolf or wolf-like form. Synonyms include lycan, (physical/real) lycanthrope, and wolf shifter.

Magicians/Mages/Witches/Wizards: People who know how to use magic and are proficient in it.

Dragons: Typically fantastical reptilian creatures that often have magical powers and varying levels of intelligence.

Unicorns: Equine creatures with a horn, sometimes attributed with magical powers.

Faeries: Magical nature spirits; they can be humanoid but can also be animalistic and anything in-between.

Spirits: Nonphysical entities that still have some sort of presence in this world.

Demons: Evil spirits (typically from Christian mythology) who can often injure, possess and torment a mortal being (like a human or animal).

Angels: Good spirits (typically from Christian mythology) who often try to help mortal beings in their time of need. They are usually associated with deities or a higher power.

Griffin: A creature that has the front half of a bird, the back half of a lion, and wings. They often mated for life and were very devoted to each other.

Satyr and Fauns: Creatures who were said to have the top half of a man and the bottom half of a goat. Satyrs had more goat features than the fauns.

Ghosts: Restless spirits from a mortal being that are said to remain on Earth when a person or animal dies. They may or may not interact with physical objects.

Centaurs: Creatures that are said to have a top half resembling a human man/woman and a bottom half resembling a horse.

Mermaids: Creatures that are said to have a top half resembling a human man/woman and a bottom half similar to an aquatic animal. They are said to not like humans and live deep in the ocean.

Djinn: A kind of spirit from Islamic mythology that can be good or bad.

Cryptids: A catch all category for creatures like bigfoot, werewolves, and more which science is skeptical on but that some people claim there's evidence for.

Starseed: A starseed is a person who is a reincarnated extraterrestrial put on Earth to help people. (Note that the various 'child' concepts in the starseed community may be a part of autism or mental health denial, and many starseed races push whiteness and supremacist values over other qualities. Not all starseeds support ableism or white supremacy of course, but traverse the community with care.)

Awakening: An awakening is the moment or timeframe when a shifter first finds out that they are a shifter or supernatural.

Shifting: A change in mental, physical, or spiritual state from one form to another. In the shifter community is it often used to refer to physical shifting, spiritual shifting and kinshifts.

Alterhumanity: Alterhumans are those who experience an identity that runs counter to the standard human experience. This includes therians and otherkin, but may also include plurals, furries, spirit channelers, otherhearted and synpaths, and more.

Otherkin/Therians/Fictionkin: People who identify non-physically as non-human beings, sometimes from mythology, nature, or fictional sources.

Clinical Lycanthropes: These are people who experience psychotic delusions in which they have the ability to transform into an animal.

Kinshifting: This is the type of shifting that otherkin and therians practice. These kinds of shifts are not physical, and do not have any sort of physical effect on the world around them.

Species Dysphoria: Species dysphoria is discomfort or unease with one's human species. Many otherkin and therians experience species dysphoria, leading them to seek out shifting communities at one point or another.

Crazy Phase: This refers to the phase new supernaturals sometimes go through, where they end up realizing they have all these powers and new abilities and go overboard with them. (Like having large astral battles to save the world, threatening to bite and curse lowly humans who get in their way since they're a powerful nonhuman, etc.) Usually these people calm down as they get used to being different and the novelty wears off.

Thoughtforms: These are energetic beings created with time and energy. They are often created to help with spiritual matters (if not as companions) and are sometimes created to resemble other entities or figures.

Spirit guides: Spirits who follow an individual or appear throughout the course of their life to help support and guard them.

Vakalomorphy (Vakalon): An innate and integral identity (on the level of species, gender, self-image, etc.) that is subjectively physical, often resulting in significant body-identity integration, morph urges, and/or identity-relevant externalized phenomena so that one experiences themselves as their identity.

Shaman: A shaman is a kind of healer, often employing spiritual, mystical or supernatural abilities to help those in their communities. Be careful who you call a shaman- some tribes and groups have their own terms for individuals stereotypically labeled as shamans, and others may disagree that what they have are shamans by any definition.

Medium: A medium is a person who can summon, converse with or channel spirits.

Psychics: These are people that can perceive things outside of the normal observable world, such as spirits or the future.

Empaths: These are people who can pick up other human emotions easily and strongly. Empaths often have to learn how to manage this ability.

Reality Shifting: Shifting your mindset to another reality or dimension. May also be known as dimensional jumping. (Is not a kind of shapeshifting, but is often confused with physical shifters due to both sharing the "shifter" term.)